


These Men of Honor I thru III

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:32:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: At last, the definite definitive truth about Alex Krycek, which causes Mulder a certain amount of discomfort.





	These Men of Honor I thru III

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

These Men Of Honor I - Absolution: Prologue by Rachel Lee Arlington

Absolution: Prologue By Rachel Lee Arlington  
  
Summary: At last, the definite definitive truth about Alex Krycek, which causes Mulder a certain amount of discomfort. Part of the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle.  
CERT: R I'm guessing, for this section at least. A little violence, one bad word (Alex, Alex) but if you're old enough to wade through this you're old enough to have heard and seen as much on TV.  
DISCLAIMER: If CC even looks like he's heading in the same direction, I'm gonna sue his ass till he squeaks. I sat up all night writing this, and I'm damned if some surf ninja is gonna get the fruits of my labor for free.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Despite the order of posting, this is chronologically the first story in the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle, and explains with the benefit of hindsight how Alex Krycek came to be standing at Mulder's desk with a signed 302 and a pack of ulterior motives. Comes *way* before 'Powerplay' by phyre, as you can tell by Mulder's attitude to Krycek, which is evidently going to undergo a *major* sea change.  
Despite the presence of Tatalya Krycek and Fairland Davis this has nothing to do with my story 'The Rat's Tale', which is at best a half way mark between the canon and this, my final attempt at solving the X files. Even if CC is mean enough to do something next season that shoots this theory out of the water, I'm still gonna stick to it: it's great, it comes out even at the end and explains everything. Which I fear is more than CC intends to do for us.  
SPOILERS: If you don't know every Krycek episode inside out and upside down and wrong side round, don't even bother, this is going to be Greek to you. Though of course, you could always get out the tapes and start studying. It's never too late to be a Ratgirl.  
FINALLY: This story begins in some parallel season five, with the body on the floor solved and Scully's cancer either cured or on hold. Let's face it, they're minor details. What's really preying on our minds is: where's Krycek? And you shouldn't need me to tell you that as far as I'm concerned, the only thing Alex lost in 'Tunguska/Terma' was his temper. I hope Nick Lea takes his still fully functional left fist and impacts it with CC's clearly non functioning head. Ratgirls of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your sanity. And your underwear.

* * *

These Men Of Honor I  
Absolution: Prologue  
by Rachel Lee Arlington

Mulder was sorting laundry, one eye on the clothes and one on the TV, when the phone rang. He threw down the two odd socks in his hand and went to answer it, expecting it to be Scully. She'd had to leave the office early to fill in for a regular pathologist out with flu, and he had still been wrangling with Skinner about a 302 for a case that would take them out of state. She'd said she'd call him at home to find out if she should pack for the expedition. He picked up the phone, a smile forming on his lips as he drew breath to say 'get your bags Scully, we're goin' on a roadtrip'.

The line clicked, clicked again, then a pause, then two more clicks, then a short silence before the connection cut off.

"Who is this?" Mulder asked the question, knowing that there could be no reply. For a moment he stood, receiver in hand, feeling the cold sense of foreboding drench down over his shoulders and spine. Then he hung up the phone and walked back to the tossed bundle of clothes on the couch, looked down at them as if he could just take up where he left off and act like nothing had happened.

Deep Throat was dead, safe in his grave in Arlington cemetery for three years. But the code was right. Repeated because the date was an even number, a space at the end before hanging up for the day of the week. Two clicks. Second choice of venue for a night meeting.

Mulder turned again, looked at the phone as if he expected it to be able to enlighten him. But it sat innocent and indifferent. Mulder took up his holster from the desk and checked the gun clip.

Alex Krycek pulled his dark green sedan in close to the kerb a couple of hundred yards back from the corner, cut the lights and engine. He scanned the street, found the car he was looking for, parked on the opposite kerb less than a hundred yards from the entryway to Mulder's building. He got out and crossed over, making his way casually towards the other car, his attention seemingly engrossed in buttoning and unbuttoning the sleek slim jacket of his dark pewter colored suit, and loosening the knot of his olive green silk tie.

As he drew nearer the car he slowed slightly, dipping and craning his head till he could make out the shape of a close cropped fair head above the driver's seat, turned towards the corner evidently not paying attention to what was happening behind the car. Krycek's mouth tightened, a little unconscious gesture of disapproval. He stepped off the kerb, approaching on the passenger side of the car. The

driver still hadn't noticed him. Krycek reached inside his jacket, eased his handgun out of its underarm holster. The passenger window was wound down, and Krycek passed the rear bumper and swooped, pulling his gun.

To be confronted by the muzzle of an automatic, resting on the back of the passenger seat, where the car driver's hand had seemed casually draped. The blonde head turned placidly, and Krycek was caught in a bright amber brown gaze.

"Krycek." The voice had a long slow southern drawl.

"Davis." Krycek's hard cool expression broke open into a smile. "When did you see me?" He asked, his voice husky with suppressed laughter as he reholstered his gun and leaned down on the open window.

"Saw the car. Saw you fussin' with your jacket an' tie. Saw you pullin' your gun." Davis had turned his head again, and Krycek realized that he wasn't just looking towards the apartment entrance, he was looking at the wing mirror, tilted to show him the street behind him. The rearview mirror was angled to let him see the offside of the car. Krycek laughed, a low hoarse sound.

"What's happening?" He asked.

"Nuthin'. Brenton's on in fifteen minutes and I'm outta here." Davis kept his head turned away from Krycek, his gaze moving steadily from apartment building to wing mirror to rearview and back as he put his gun away.

"Hot date?" Krycek's eyes moved absently towards the entryway, registering the short stocky man walking towards the car and then turning in towards the front of the apartment building, but not really paying attention. So it took a second for the glimpse he'd caught of the side of the man's face to sift down through his memory and find its place.

"Scorchin'," Davis was saying, and Krycek's mouth was still shaping out a smile and a smartass reply as the sudden blow of recognition hit him, lifting him off the car window on a wave of adrenalin.

"Target! That's McMahon, he's one of the Smoker's men." Krycek was dragging his gun free as he ran around the front of the car. Davis flung his door open, scrambling out, but Krycek was already ahead of him. "Fuck!! He's got a gun." Krycek read the movement of McMahon's hand inside his loose coat. "Where's Mulder?!?"

"He's - " Davis was on the verge of saying 'inside' when he saw the tall shape vivid in the lit hallway through the open door. Mulder, in jeans and casual jacket, head down as he searched in his pocket for his carkeys. "Oh Christ."

Krycek took one fraction of a second to judge the angle and distance, and took off across the street at a headlong sprint, long legs eating up the distance, cleared the low wall in front of the building, coming in on an intercept between McMahon and the front door. Davis ran straight across, trying to come in behind McMahon.

Mulder, deep in thought, came out the front door and looked up, suddenly aware of someone running across the kerb, leaping the front wall. Just flashes and scraps, impressions that lasted milliseconds: sleek dark head, the dull glint of a gun, a hard intent face turned towards him, eyes like glass. Alex Krycek.

"Mulder get down!" Krycek shouted the words, but Mulder's brain refused to translate the gritty sound of his voice into meaning. The world narrowed to Krycek's proximity and the cool oily slip of Mulder's gun under his hand as he tried to pull it free from his waist holster.

"You son of a..." Everything slowed, turned to an endless instant while Mulder drew his gun and the small fragment of his attention not absorbed by Krycek running towards him became aware of a third man, a heavy built figure in a loose cloth coat, gun extended shoulder high, the muzzle a small black void pointing straight at Mulder.

"McMahon, drop the gun! Drop it!" Krycek was twenty feet away from Mulder, completely ignoring Mulder's gun trained on him, his own weapon pointed at McMahon. Mulder saw the gun muzzle falter away from him and towards Krycek for an instant, then swing back, the flash of the discharge a white flower burnt on his vision for a lifetime before he hit the door frame and felt the sear of pain down his forearm, his hand falling open and his gun hitting the ground at his foot.

The gun muzzle centered on him, steady. McMahon had wide round gray eyes, with very fair lashes. Mulder's heart pounded once, stilled, his blood standing in his veins.

Krycek slammed into Mulder hard, knocking him against the wall so that Mulder's forehead banged painfully off the hard plaster. Two shots, Mulder felt the impact of them as an echo through Krycek's body. Krycek swung his gun hand up and Mulder saw the muzzle waver slightly then the flash of the discharge. The round caught McMahon in the left shoulder, spun him slightly, but he steadied himself and his gun went off twice more. Krycek hit the wall, sliding downwards. Mulder got a glimpse of his face, dead white, blind eyes, then saw his hand around his gun, struggling to squeeze the trigger with fingers he could no longer flex.

Davis got off one clean shot, drilled McMahon right through the back of the head and dropped him like a stone. He ran to the apartment entry, jumping over the corpse in his way, flew to where Krycek was letting the gun drop from his fingers, letting his eyes flicker closed. Davis threw one predatory glance at Mulder, seeing the small bloody graze on his temple and the bloodstained tear on his jacket sleeve, then swooped down to Krycek, took in the mess of blood and torn cloth.

"Get down." Davis snapped the instruction at Mulder, who was too disorientated to argue. He hunkered down in the doorway while Davis pulled a cellphone and called 911, looking warily around him all the time.

Davis had given the location and requested an EMT when they heard a car pulling up and the door slamming, someone running across the street. Davis squared up, gun raised, putting himself between Mulder and the approaching figure. Then he recognized the man coming towards him, gun in hand.

"Brenton, watch the street."

The dark haired solidly built young man Davis had addressed instantly turned his back on the apartment scanning his surroundings.

Davis was pulling Krycek's jacket out of his way, stripping off his own and wadding it on Krycek's chest over the blossoming wet stains of scarlet. Krycek's eyelids flickered, opened enough to show a narrow gleam of blue green. His eyebrows tensed, drawing together. His small precise mouth opened, and he said something, a thread of sound that Davis had to lean down to catch.

"Mulder's okay," he answered, controlling the venom in his voice.

Krycek relaxed, his eyes closing. Davis pressed two fingertips to the side of Krycek's neck, his face intent. "Ah come on Alex, don't die on me, the boss'll kick my ass into next year." Krycek's mouth flinched, the intention a smile, but then it dropped into blankness. Mulder, with the sound of sirens pushing into his awareness, managed to find his voice again.

"Who are you?" He demanded of the man leaning over Krycek.

"Fairland Davis, Central Intelligence Agency." The words were said with bitter satisfaction.

"And him?" Mulder lifted his chin, indicating the body on the ground.

"The dead one?" Davis wasn't sure Mulder didn't mean Brenton, who was standing in that general direction too. Mulder nodded.

"Krycek made him as McMahon, he works - worked, for your friend with the nicotine fixation. The one still alive is Aaron Brenton, he's CIA as well."

Mulder's gaze came back to Krycek, to his white drawn face, to Davis's hands leaning on him as if he could drive the blood back into his body by force of will. Mulder didn't ask, and Davis didn't volunteer an answer.

Brenton went with Krycek in the ambulance. Davis insisted on taking Mulder in himself. The paramedics weren't very happy, and the police who turned up just after them were even less contented, but Davis hauled out his ID and flashed it around and they grudgingly let him have his own way. Mulder had managed to get his jacket off and pull up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and even he could see that the round had done no more than clip the flesh inside his forearm. When Davis tried to usher him to the car he hung back.

"I can't go to the hospital, I have to... there's someone who needs to meet with me."

"What?!?" Davis spat the word out in angry disbelief. "Agent Mulder sir," the drawl was thick with sarcastic politeness, "I don't think you exactly understand what's goin' on. They just tried to kill you, right out here in public and not like they could make out it was an accident or somethin'. That smoke tanned old buzzard has lost whatever small sense he had. He wants you dead and he doesn't care who knows it. You're goin' nowhere except to the hospital an' I ain't exactly thrilled about that, but I guess it can't be helped."

"What's it to you?" Mulder asked in honest bewilderment, though he now realized that the call must have been the lure to bring him out where McMahon could get at him. Someone somewhere had replicated Deep Throat's code. "What do you people care if I get killed?"

"Nuthin'. Not a damn. That's why my best friend has four bullet holes in him. Now would you please get in the car... sir." Davis was three years younger than Mulder and four inches shorter and had the kind of heart shaped face and almond eyes and china doll mouth that would make a pretty woman. Something in the tone of his voice and the glint of his tiger's eyes made Mulder's guts start trying to climb over each other in an attempt to get out of the way. Mulder got in the car.

Davis drove one handed while he got out his cellphone and dialed without looking at what he was doing. He tucked the phone between his chin and shoulder and must have got an answer almost at once. Mulder listened to the cryptic one sided conversation.

"Sir, it's Davis. They just tried for a knockdown. Yes sir, right out in the open. No sir, he's fine," a sidelong glance from Davis told Mulder it was his health that was being discussed. "He's dead." That must have been about McMahon. "I didn't know him sir, it was Krycek put the make on him, said his name was McMahon." There was a pause, and Davis's voice dropped a tone. "He's on his way to the hospital sir, he's hurt. I think he's hurt pretty bad, four rounds, into the chest." Another pause. "Yes sir, I guess someone better call her, an' it'd be best comin' from you. I'll see you at the hospital. Thank you sir." Davis killed the connection, set his face in a mask of blank indifference and focused his attention on driving.

They made it to the hospital about two minutes behind the ambulance. Davis hustled Mulder into the Accident and Emergency, where Brenton was pacing in the hallway till he saw them approach.

"How's he doin'?" Davis threw the question while he and Mulder were still walking towards Brenton.

"We just got here, they're taking a look at him. He's... he's still alive." Brenton looked very young and very shaken.

"Stay here. Dubretsky's gonna come in, he's gonna call Alex's sister. You wait for him, I'm gonna get someone to take a look at Agent Mulder." Davis's solid calm tone infused itself into Brenton too, and he nodded firmly, happy to have instructions to follow.

"What have we got?" Someone managed to make themselves heard over the controlled panic of the ER, over the noise of voices cutting across each other as the gurney was swung into place and half a dozen pairs of hands started trying to salvage something from the mess of bloodstained flesh and clothing.

"Multiple gunshot. Three in the chest, another one in the right abdomen."

Krycek's jacket had been cut away by the paramedics and his shirt pulled open. His holster still hung from his shoulder, causing a certain amount of dubious looks from the staff attending him, but one of the medics reached for a shears and cut the strap and lifted the holster clear, holding it rather gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

"It's okay." A nurse coming through the swing doors caught the look the medic was giving the holster. "The guy who came in with him has his gun, and we have ID." She held up a plain leather pocketbook.

"He's a cop?"

"He's CIA."

"Jesus. Okay, let's get him on whole blood..." The doctor took the pocketbook from the nurse and glanced down at it "... B positive." He passed the ID back to the nurse, then leaned down over his patient, locking his gaze on the flickering eyelids above the clear oxygen mask. "Agent Krycek. Alex. Can you hear me? Alex you've been shot, but you're going to be okay, just stay with me, alright?" To his satisfaction the man on the gurney moved his head a fraction of an inch, and the fingers of one blood streaked hand flexed very slightly. "Okay we've got one lung down, let's get a chest tube in here."

"His blood pressure's dropping, we're losing blood somewhere."

"We have an OR."

"Okay, let's get him upstairs."

Mulder submitted to having his arm cleaned and bandaged, and a small dressing put on his forehead. The whole time he was being attended to, Davis was hovering in the background impatiently. Mulder was just pulling back on his bloodstained sweatshirt when Davis, who had been pacing aimlessly back and forth across the doorway, suddenly stood still, watching someone approach. Mulder slid down off the couch and watched warily as another man appeared at the door.

The newcomer was taller than Mulder by a safe two inches, and wider by at least that much on each shoulder. His hair was fair brown, cut to a severe one inch long all over, receding slightly from a widow's peak. He had hard narrow facial features, all angles and crags, with constellations of deeply etched lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes and cutting from his nose to either side of his rather small lean mouth, and a fine white scar marked his upper lip. His eyes were light hazel, a taupe color speckled with tiny flecks of blue and gray and khaki green. He wore a charcoal gray raincoat over a gunmetal gray suit. Mulder got a glimpse of white shirt and dark blue tie.

"Mister Mulder. I'm Christian Dubretsky, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency." Dubretsky drew one gloved hand out of his coat pocket and flashed an ID that Mulder didn't know enough about to be able to judge for authenticity.

"What is this, the CIA annual jamboree? I already have one of your boys joined to me at the hip," Mulder lifted his chin, indicating Davis still prowling at the door, "and there's one more around here somewhere."

"Two more. One of them is in an OR having four thirty eight calibre bullets pulled out of him."

"Alex Krycek is CIA?" Mulder's voice hit disbelief and stayed up there, cracking slightly on the surname.

"I'm afraid you'll have to tolerate Mister Davis's presence for a while longer," Dubretsky said, totally ignoring Mulder's outburst. "I have every reason to believe that the attempt on your life tonight was... unauthorized. The man who ordered it is being sent for by his superiors right now. But till I have confirmation that he has agreed to let you alone, I'd prefer you stayed where we can see you."

"You'd *prefer*?" Mulder was offbalance and confused and it was coming out as aggression. Dubretsky took a single step forward, standing between Mulder and the doorway. It was like someone just put up a brickwall.

"I'd *really* prefer it."

Mulder backed off, angry at himself as much as at Dubretsky. He had no idea of what was going on, but he had a feeling he was safer with Dubretsky than without him. Dubretsky read the change in Mulder's demeanor, and his own expression softened a little.

"Mister Mulder. One of my agents is hurt, maybe dying. I'm not going anywhere till I know for sure about him. You're not going anywhere till I know you're not in danger. Maybe we should just go get a coffee. Maybe we should talk."

"What about?" Mulder asked warily.

"I've been a covert operative for twenty years Mister Mulder. That length of time... you come to think of secrecy as a virtue in itself. Now I'm not so sure. Now I think maybe you should know who your friends are."

Krycek was somewhere with the ebb and flow of breath, of his own breath like a tide, in his ears.

Fragments. Scraps and shards of time. A moment, filled by a thought or look or feeling that opened and unfolded until it lasted a lifetime. Knowledge and insight and certainty that had taken years to come by, suddenly compressed and crystallized into a single point of time no longer than a heartbeat. All floating together, lifting and dipping on dark lapping water.

Pale golden light.

The sun was shining in through the window of his father's study. There wasn't a window seat, but the sill was wide enough to accommodate a slender wiry boy of twelve and one of his father's books, with their tiny unforgiving print and their intricately drawn maps, each overlaid by a sheet of glassine paper. His world was the warm bright space between the drape and window pane, and the wide oceans and battlefields and conference tables of history, and the sight of people crossing the street below, going about their business, and the scratch of his father's pen across the pages of his students' essays.

They lived in Boston, in a tall old house, full of books and sunlight and beautiful things. His father was old, much older than the fathers of his schoolfriends were. Alex was vaguely aware of some story of war and hardship that lay behind his father's coming to America: that the things he read of in his father's history books had been so real that they had impinged on his father's life, that they had been a part of his father's coming to live here, of his meeting with Alex's mother while she was a student and he was a revered and admired academic; and so of Alex's own birth.

Some of the things in that house were fine and fragile: glass like soap bubbles, china lighter than eggshells. Alex was a boisterous young boy; his sister Tatalya was a reckless toddler. Things got broken. And when they did, his father took up the pieces in his big hands and showed them to his son.

"Look," he would said. "One hundred years and more this little cup has survived. Through war and revolution and hardship for its owners, it has come across the ocean from the Old World to the New. And now it has collided with my Alex, and see, it is just clay and paint, just trash that your mother will throw away."

Alex took one of the shards from his father's palm, feeling rather sheepish, but interested to see how very thin the ceramic was, examining the hairfine cross section of the piece he held.

"This is important, Alex," his father said, and Alex looked up into his bright blue eyes. "This cup was beautiful, and a little valuable, but it was a thing. It was not precious. You, your sister, your mother... I would break every piece of glass or china in this house to spare any of you one moment's unhappiness. Do you understand? Things and people. The books that you and I love so much: history is the stories of real people. Nothing else has real value, but people, the people we love."

Alex looked back down at the white and red and gold fragment in his hand, nodding carefully, smiling. He was thinking of little Tatalya, and the mark on her lip where she had fallen on the front step a few days before. How his mother had kissed and caressed and soothed her little daughter, more affectionate and attentive than ever because she was hurt.

Alex smiled up at his father, wide set tilted eyes like his, but their deep jade green color an amalgam of his father's blue eyes and his mother's deep emerald ones.

"I understand. When things get broken or spoilt, then they aren't any good. But people... when a person is hurt, or something in them gets spoilt..." He trailed off, unable to express what it was he felt, but his father saw the dawning realization in his son's eyes, and touched his lips to Alex's broad forehead, and then shooed him away, telling him to take the broken pieces of the teacup downstairs and wrap them up carefully and throw them in the trash.

It was years later, while his father suffered stoically through his final illness, that Alex's mother told him the story of his father's other family, his first family. A wife and two sons left behind in Russia. Left in their graves: dead of the harsh realities of war and tyranny. Alex, out of a thousand memories, found over and over the image of his father embracing him with fervent intensity, saying in his beautiful courtly Russian:

"Alex, you are all my sons."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At eight years old Tatalya was a long legged colt of a child in a red velvet Christmas dress, with a tulle bow in her dark red brown hair. Alex sat with her on the sill of the study window, though at eighteen he was tall enough and broad enough that he could only perch precariously beside her, and they looked at the large glossy picture book she had been given by Senator Aldridge. See, her father joked, already you see the advantages of my leaving the academic life for the political. The Senator had smilingly replied that if all his advisors had such charming daughters, his expenditure in picture books would be reprehensible indeed. Tatalya had dimpled and tossed her hair and taken the gift as her due. The combination of solid noble Slavic blood and wild Boston Irish was formidable even in a child.

After dinner, in the drawing room, with the curtains drawn and the lights of the Christmas tree twinkling against the deep burgundy window drapes, the conversation had turned idly to Alex's plans for college. The Senator was much taken with Alex's easy proficiency in Russian: more than merely fluent, he spoke most naturally in his father's polished Moscow accent, but he had picked up half a dozen others in the Russian neighborhood, from the slow laconic tones of western Russia to the singsong lilt of the steppes.

Alex had intended to study history, but somewhere in the course of that evening, listening to the Senator describing his hopes for the future, discoursing on how it was the inherent liberalism of the young that he relied on to guide the course of history in wiser kinder paths, he had a change of plan. He was thinking too of his father telling him so earnestly that the stories in those history books were the lives of real people.

Alex went upstairs to his father's study and stood in the chill space between the window and the drapes, looking down at the snowy street, the streetlights making sparkling halos in the blue evening. After a while, he heard the door open behind him, and the drape lifted, and a small slender body tucked itself into the window recess beside him.

"What are you doing Alex?" Tatalya wound her thin little arms around his waist, putting her cheek against his sweater.

"Just thinking."

"Bout what?"

"Books."

"What?" She drew back, smiling up at him. Alex took hold of the curtain and pulled it back, his gaze tracking over the expanse of shelves and side tables and the large desk, all covered with books.

"All that paper, all those words... they're not real. I want to do something... real."

"Oh." Tatalya settled her cheek back on her brother's side. Alex smiled at the tone of her voice, as if she fully understood and approved his decision.

"Come on Princess," he said, smoothing her hair. "Let's go down and see if you missed anything under the tree."

It was bitterly cold. A thin raw wind, with sharp icy flecks of sleet cutting against the side of his face, and the freezing tracks of his tears scouring the skin of his cheeks. He had to turn away from the graveside and wipe his face with the palms of his gloves before he could face the kind condolences of his father's friends and associates. His mother and sister had taken refuge in the car, and he could see the shadow of their two dark heads bowed together through the rear window.

"Alex."

"Senator Aldridge, thank you for coming."

"I'm so very sorry Alex. Your father will be sorely missed."

Alex had to turn his head again, and fight for calm.

"I know that sir."

"Alex..." The Senator hesitated, then plunged in. "I appreciate that you may not want to make plans just yet, but... I understand you leave college this fall. I just want you to know that I would be happy to have you join my staff. A Krycek with a postgrad in politics.... that's a formidable combination."

"Thank you sir. And... I would be proud to work for you. My father admired you greatly."

"It was mutual Alex. It was mutual."

"Alexander Krycek? Mind if I sit down for a second?"

"Eh... sure. Go ahead." Alex drew some of the fortification of open books he had collected around him on the library desk towards him, clearing a space in front of the shorthaired sharp suited man who had addressed him.

"Working hard?" His visitor surveyed the array of paper on the desk with evident complacency.

"Yeah... thesis deadline in five days."

"Um. Though I gather your thesis is just a formality. The only way you don't get an honors degree is if you send in a bunch of blank paper."

"Well... I don't think it's quite that much of a done deal." Alex looked at the other man rather narrowly. "I'm sorry, do I know you, Mister... ?"

"Carey. I was hoping I could talk to you about your plans for after this." He waved one hand over the desk, indicating the thesis, and by association all things academic.

Alex relaxed, smiling. Another recruiting agent.

"I'm sorry Mister Carey. I've already settled on my future plans. I'll be going to - "

"Senator Aldridge's staff. I heard. But I was hoping I could interest you in a slightly different branch of the government..."

"The CIA? You want to join the CIA? Alex, are you crazy? You want to be a spy?" Alex's mother sat down heavily, her hand on her chest as if to physically hold in her frantic heart.

Alex pulled another chair out from the glossy rosewood table, and sat down beside her, smiling broadly.

"It isn't like that at all. They need researchers, translators, people with backgrounds in politics, diplomacy. Things are changing so fast in Russia and we need peacemakers, not spies. This is the very thing that Senator Aldridge talks about. The thing that Father talked about. Taking all the things we read about in those books and making them real, making them change how people live. I want to do that, I want to do something that counts."

He got lucky, they sent him straight to Virginia. The work was pretty routine, translating intelligence reports, attaching explanatory notes where required; but he was making useful contacts, learning the system, and he had been given a commitment that in six or eight months he would be moved to Moscow station. For now he just had to learn the ropes.

Even as an academic he was put through a basic fieldcraft course. The fundamentals of security practice he mastered quickly and efficiently, as so much more knowledge to add to his already extensive education. The only thing that caused the faintest ruffle in his composure was the requirement that he take a short course in the use of firearms.

He wasn't a natural shot by any means, but from the first moment he picked up the gun, something in the slick cold metal, the raw oily scent and sense of weight - and the handgun was so much heavier than he had expected -seemed to have a brutal reality to it that made everything else recede into the background. The recoil didn't make him flinch, he instinctively leaned into it, feeling the solid kick of the gun as a something sweet and strong and satisfying. After the course, he put the gun he was issued with away in the back of his desk drawer and thought no more about it. But deep inside, something hungry and dark and free of morality had had its first taste of life.

Mulder allowed himself to be steered into a small waiting room, with battered vinyl covered chairs and a low table with a lot of ragged dogeared magazines scattered over it. Davis, by dint of southern charm, had managed to obtain three mugs of coffee which, while vile, was considerably better than what came out of the vending machine in the hallway. Mulder sat down, Dubretsky pulled another chair out from the wall and sat facing him, after taking off his coat and draping its sweeping folds on the chair back. Davis however went and stood at the door, and after a while took a chair and sat in the hallway just outside.

"You never answered my question." Mulder was looking into his coffee as if he held it responsible for Dubretsky's reticence. "Alex Krycek works for the CIA?" The outrage had gone from Mulder's voice. He didn't have such a high opinion of the CIA that he could feel much surprise at their choice of employee.

"Works for me, for the Agency, yes."

"All along?" Mulder could feel the sinews of his brain cracking and straining to try and re evaluate the past in the light of this new information.

Dubretsky took a certain satisfaction in finally saying it out loud. Other than Fox Mulder, there was only one person on earth Chris would sooner have made this admission to, and if things went as he hoped, if Alex Krycek lived, then Chris Dubretsky was going to give himself the pleasure of explaining matters to that smoke tanned old bastard too, who could break the bad news to his friends in the KGB.

"Yes. All along. Alex Krycek has been in the employ of the CIA since nineteen ninety one. He's worked for me personally since ninety two."

Dubretsky waited for some kind of reaction, but none was forthcoming. Mulder sat and studied the ring forming around the surface of his coffee, while Dubretsky unbuttoned his jacket, loosened the knot of his tie a little, settling his long legs comfortably and reaching one hand inside his jacket momentarily to ease the strap of his shoulder holster. Then he began to speak, quite quietly and naturally, as if he were telling the story to himself.

"Alex came into the Agency as a research assistant or a translator or something. He had a post grad in politics and he could speak Russian In twenty different accents. They had him pushing papers in the Pentagon. That's what he was... a desk jockey. That's all he was meant to be.

In ninety one I was running this nice little counter espionage scam for the Company. We had turned someone in the KGB, someone who was part of an operation to put Russian agents in place in a number of security agencies and research facilities here. At the time, we thought their interest was in generalized espionage. Now I think they were working to another agenda. Their targets included projects on transmission of viruses, gene therapy,fetal development... and the FBI.

Well, like I say, we had someone inside the operation. The Russians would go to all this trouble training these guys to pass as American, setting up cover stories and identities for them here, bring them in. And we'd know about them before they ever got here. Sometimes we'd arrange for them to meet a little... accident. Sometimes we'd let them get where they going, and just keep tabs on them. Sometimes we'd use them to feed junk information back to the Russians."

"You couldn't just arrest them?" Mulder asked, half sarcastically.

"No Mister Mulder, we couldn't. We had to block the Russians without letting them know we were on to them. If they realized we knew what was going on, their first thought would be that we had someone on the inside of their operation. And I don't think they'd have settled for arresting our man.

Sometime early in the year - I think it was about the third week in January, we got word that the Russians had selected another candidate to come over. They were targeting the FBI, and the guy they'd picked for the job was in a whole different league from the other ones they'd sent.

His name was Arntzen, Ishmar Arntzen. I'm sure the name doesn't mean anything to you, but his father was a big shot in the Politburo during the sixties and seventies, and Ishmar had the best education communism could buy.

He went to the Military Academy in Moscow, passed out top of his class. All he had to do was keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble and he was a made man.

He made Lieutenant in eighty nine. They sent him over to Afghanistan, where he served with distinction. Took a bullet in the leg about five months into his tour, and was invalided home to Moscow.

And that should be the last we hear of him. He should have been given a nice job as an aide to some guy with a fruit salad of medals on his chest and he would have been out of the way.

But I guess active service gave him a taste for a little action, some adventure. The next thing you know, Arntzen's traded in his army rank for a place in the KGB. And this guy is pushing hard, he's on the fast track and he's ready for anything.

Well, when I find out that this is who the Russians have lined up for the trip, I figure they maybe know something is going on, something is messing up their operation. I figure they feel they're not getting the return on their efforts and investment that they should be getting. Arntzen is an all or nothing bet: he's way too smart to walk under a bus, or fall off a balcony, or let himself get deadended in a job with no security access, or any of the other things that seemed to have happened to their other operatives. If they don't get a result from him, they're gonna know for sure they have a problem.

So, I have the choice between letting Arntzen in - and he's a smart boy, the kind that you don't want rattling around loose in the FBI - or blocking him, and the only way you're gonna block someone like Arntzen is with a bullet in the head, which means exposing my man in the KGB.

Great choice, huh? Well, I was putting in twenty hour days looking at the pictures and reading the reports and trying to come up with some shade of gray in a black and white situation, and getting nowhere..."

Dubretsky pushed back from the desk, throwing the folder in his hand down on top of the other pages spread out in front of him. He stretched his head back, grimacing as something in his neck crunched and clicked.

"You want some coffee sir?" Davis, on the other side of the desk, looked up from the handwritten list he held, glad to get his eyes off the innumerable scratchings out and overwritings for a second.

"Yeah... no it's okay, I'll go. I need to get out of this chair before I lose the use of my legs. You want some?"

"Yes, thank you sir."

"Okay. I'll be a few minutes, I'm gonna go walk around for a while, I think I'm losing the circulation to my feet."

Dubretsky stood up rather slowly and painfully, twisting his shoulders to try and loosen them. He cast a glance towards his jacket on the coatstand in the corner but left it where it hung and went out as he was, in shirt sleeves with his gun holster loose on his shoulder.

In the hallway he had a second of complete disorientation, blinking at the sight of freshly shaved and pressed agents coming to work with takeout cappuccinos and morning newspapers in their hands. He caught one or two curious glances, though by and large the paper pushers considered the activities of the spy catchers to be too bizarre to mention. He looked down at his watch and realized that it wasn't in fact Thursday evening as he had half thought, it was Friday morning.

Scratching ruefully at the dark blond stubble on his jaw Chris made his way down to the corner of the hallway where the coffee maker was kept going night and day. He took down a couple of mugs and had just taken up the coffee jug when, yawning and grizzling, he cast an idle glance down the hallway towards the open plan office the spy catchers referred rather scathingly to as the Paper Mill.

"Holy..."

Dubretsky whispered the word. Years as a covert operative had trained him so that in any degree of extremis, his instinct was to become very quiet and still. Gently he put the coffee jug back down, slowly he lifted his hand to his holster, easing his gun out, thumbing the safety off.

He was dimly aware that he was too exhausted and too stressed to be thinking clearly. That somewhere there was a flaw in his certainty that Ishmar Arntzen had somehow fetched up in the Pentagon, standing right out in plain view of at least two dozen CIA agents, helping himself to a desk in the middle of the Paper Mill, putting down a coffee carton and flicking through a sheaf of manilla folders he had taken from the in tray.

But Chris couldn't deny what he was seeing. He had spent too long scrutinizing every available picture of Arntzen not to know that profile, with its sharp elegant bones and the dark wing of hair falling forward and shading that broad forehead. As he moved cautiously forward, Chris had enough time to think that Arntzen had lost weight since the last picture had been taken, he lacked the slightly blurred muscularity Chris had expected.

"Put your hands up, step away from the desk." Chris had the muzzle of his gun against that glossy dark head before his quarry was even aware of his presence.

Chris gave him mental credit for not showing any great dismay: just a blink of surprise, then he lifted his hands slowly, the bunch of papers still held aloft, as he backed one pace from the edge of the desk. Chris took the folders from him, throwing them down on the desk, peripherally aware of people stopping to watch this strange drama as he roughly patted down both sides of his prisoner's suit looking for a gun. Nothing.

"Turn around. *Slow*." Chris stood back a little, but kept his gun trained at the level of the other man's temple. He wasn't inclined to take any chances, this guy was evidently way crazier than Chris had allowed for.

Arntzen. Arntzen? It was like one of those weird dreams where you know who someone is meant to be, despite the fact that they don't look like themselves. Every feature was there, every point that made Ishmar Arntzen who he was, but everything ever so slightly redrawn, mostly with a finer more fragile line, so that the overall effect was a slightly younger slightly less masculine man.

Chris let the gun muzzle drop, but he kept both hands cradled around the grip, and his eyes locked on this strange find.

"Who the heck are you?" He asked, his tone indicating only faint irritation.

"Em... Agent Krycek. Alex Krycek."

Of course, Dubretsky's first thought was that Krycek was too good to be true. And in Dubretsky's experience, anything that seemed too good to be true, was. So Agent Krycek was summarily suspended from duty while Dubretsky had his background taken apart, looking for the connection to Ishmar Arntzen that he knew must be there.

But it wasn't. After a week of suspension, Agent Krycek was recalled, and Dubretsky sent for him.

"Agent Krycek. May I introduce myself a little more formally than the last time we met? I'm Chris Dubretsky, Counter Espionage."

"Pleased to meet you sir," Krycek replied, somewhat insincerely.

"Whatever." Dubretsky smiled, as he got up from behind his desk and walked over to a filing cabinet, taking out a thick folder.

"I hope you'll overlook the rather... rude treatment you got from me, and this whole investigation thing you've had to go through this week. But I think you'll see how I could have had my doubts about you...."

Dubretsky took out a single photograph from the folder in his hand and laid it down in front of Krycek with the air of a conjuror.

For a second Krycek didn't understand. Didn't understand why the picture had been taken without his knowledge, or where it had been taken. He tried to place the street, the moment when he had been standing at the door of a church, looking away to something out of frame and not seeing the camera trained on him.

Then he registered the street sign just visible in the top of the photo, the models of the cars parked in the foreground... this picture had been taken in Russia. And he'd never been there.

"Who is this?" Krycek looked up at Dubretsky, a wide eyed appeal for help.

"His name is Ishmar Arntzen, he works for the KGB."

It was a test. A way of sounding the quality and purity of the young man. Dubretsky watched narrowly as Krycek looked back down at the picture. Watched as the bright spinning mechanism of his mind turned, working out the possibilities. Every shade and nuance of his thoughts passed visibly across his fine boned face, moved his small bowed mouth. Oh brother, thought Dubretsky, whatever else we do we have to teach him to control his expression.

Krycek's first thought was of his father's other family. That this man who was his double was somehow one or other of his dead halfbrothers, snatched out of the maelstrom and grown to adulthood.

But that wouldn't work. Krycek took his height and width from his father, and the wide flat bones of his temples and cheeks, and the shape of his eyes. But his colouring was from his mother's family, pure Black Irish, his red black hair and black lashes and pale sallow skin that tanned easily and quickly, freckling sparsely with little flecks the colour of dark chocolate. And his eyes, like Tatalya's, were a colour unknown in either family, a perfect blending of both, and he knew from his own mother that his father's first wife had been a Nordically fair woman, and her sons had taken after her.

Dubretsky volunteered a short resume of Arntzen's background and career, laying down a few more pictures of Arntzen as he did so, allowing Krycek to see that the resemblance was striking from any angle.

Krycek was half listening to Dubretsky, half trying to resolve some deep truth from the fact that the pairing of a Russian couple on Soviet soil, and that of his own father and his Irish American motherhad somehow produced two men as alike as twins.

"My father was Russian," he said, rather hesitantly. "Is it possible that I'm even distantly related to..." He stopped as he realized that Dubretsky had got there way ahead of him. "That's what you've been looking for all week, isn't it? You think he and I are..."

"That was my first thought. And once I found out your father was a former Soviet citizen... that's why I had you up and off the premises as fast as I did. "

Krycek frowned, displeased that his father should have been considered a shade on anyone's integrity.

"Don't worry." Dubretsky sat down again, drawing his chair in close to the desk. "You checked out, your father checked out, and as far as anyone can ascertain, the resemblance between you and Arntzen is... just one of those things. A lucky break for me."

"A lucky... ? I don't think I understand."

Liar, thought Dubretsky. He could read the sudden sharp glitter in Krycek's eyes, the way that mouth suddenly tightened, clamping down on something he was on the verge of saying. Good, Dubretsky said to himself. You think first, speak later. I think we can work with that.

Krycek had a not entirely unpleasant sense of the surface of the world giving way beneath him, so that he was falling into a strange new universe, where the accidents of his birth, the shape and tilt of his eyes, the fact of his having spoken Russian every day of his life, were all suddenly more significant than anything as trite as knowledge or education or even intent.

For a long second he wavered on the edge. The words formed themselves in his mind, found the tip of his tongue, waited only for his lips to part and give them shape. To tell this hard faced bright eyed crazy that he was an academic, that he had joined the Agency solely because the days for this kind of cloak and dagger stuff were over.

Years later, looking back on it, he would convince himself that he had made no decision at that point. That when he did speak, he asked for information merely out of curiosity. Which was disingenuous to say the least. He had been in the Agency plenty long enough to know that information was a double edged knife: to know something was to be responsible. To ask was to indicate a willingness to be a part of something, and to be given an answer was to be inducted into a new more demanding level of complicity.

"You seriously think I could pass for him. You want me to go to Russia, and pass for a KGB man. I've never even been to Russia, and okay, I look really like him, but I couldn't fool anyone who knows him well."

Dubretsky smiled, a slow blade of an expression. He loved being proved right. He'd had no problem getting authorization to put this proposition to Agent Krycek, despite Krycek being so recently recruited, because not for one second did anyone think that Krycek was going to bite. On the contrary, they expected him to go running back to his desk and his translations as fast as he could.

But Dubretsky had scanned over the evaluations and psyche tests, and more importantly he'd talked to Agent Krycek's instructors. The trace was there, faint, and deeply hidden beneath a fine education and laudable principles and an essentially good nature. But Dubretsky had seen it, seen the thin steel gleam, the need to be somewhere fear and adrenaline and danger could put sharp edges on the world.

"No, you're right, you'd have no hope of passing in Russia, but that's not the idea. The plan is you pass for Arntzen right here. With people who know him only from pictures like these."

"Here?"

"Yeah. Arntzen's coming to the States, just as soon as the KGB can cook up a cover story for him."

"How soon is that?" Krycek's voice failed on the last word, as the implications of the situation began to sink in.

"We don't know for sure. Though... we could help things along." Dubretsky had a dangerous glint in his eyes as he looked at some vision hanging in the air before him. Krycek sat as still and quiet as he could for as long as he could.

"How?" The clean intent way he finally asked the question was his ticket into Dubretsky's department.

"We supply them with a cover ourselves." Dubretsky got up, gathering handfuls of files and folders off his desk and roughly stacking them on top of the filing cabinets. "Have Supplies send a desk in here for you, and you'll need a secure line and someone from the typing pool to do your paper work for you. If you have any plans for the weekend, cancel them, we have work to do. And clean out your desk in the Paper Mill, you work for me now."

Mulder had leaned forward in his chair, unconsciously drawn by the story Dubretsky was telling. Dubretsky, on the other hand, had leaned back further and eased the knot of his tie a little further down and opened the top button of his shirt collar. It was going to be a long night, and he had no intention of leaving before it was over. There'd been enough subterfuge and sleight of hand in the past three years. It was time for a little truth.

"You have to understand, Agent Mulder. The situation was less than perfect. Alex knew about as much about being a double agent as a fibb - sorry, as a..." Dubretsky stalled out, unable to come up with any comparison other than the one he had abandoned out of courtesy towards Mulder.

"So I wanted to keep things simple. It was enough for Alex to have to master Arntzen's contacts and codes here, without having to master some elaborate cover story that the Russians would come up with for Arntzen, to pass him off as an American.

We fed our own choice of cover story to the Russians, via the agent we had in the Russian end of the operation: that was his input into the whole thing, designing cover stories for these guys.

So the Russians spend all spring and most of the summer drilling Arntzen in the cover story we had planted, preparing documents, teaching him to be an American. While we tried to teach Alex not to laugh when he got nervous. And I gotta tell you, I really think the Russians got the easy job."

"And the cover story you had your agent in the KGB use. What was it?" Mulder asked, though his expression made it clear he already had a pretty good idea, so Dubretsky just lifted one eyebrow and waited for Mulder to answer his own question.

"It was Krycek, wasn't it?" Mulder ventured. "You used his real life as a cover story for Arntzen."

"Gave a whole new meaning to the expression 'economical with the truth'. Why make something up when you can make the truth do double duty?"

"So what happened to the real Arntzen?"

"Ah. Well. Couple of weeks before Arntzen was due to come over, we sent Alex to Moscow on a cheap tourist flight, with his hair in his face and a student ticket and a passport in the name of... Lynch I think. Anyhow, he spent a fortnight kicking around his ancestral hometown and loosening up his accent, and then he came back on the same flight as Arntzen.

And, somehow or other, in the course of that flight, Arntzen ended up in a bodybag in the cargo section, and Alex ended up wearing his suit sitting in his window seat. The part I felt had a certain ironic symmetry to it was the passport. The Russians had this pretty good fake made up with Arntzen's picture and Krycek's name on it. That went into the bag with Arntzen, and Alex came back into the country on his own passport."

"So Krycek killed Arntzen," Mulder said bleakly. For some reason, the idea hurt, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Hell no. Alex was a rookie, and I knew he'd had enough of a moral crisis when he finally worked out that there was no way we were going to have two Arntzen's or Krycek's or whoever they were, running around. The only way I really got him past that was laying it on thick about what a risk Arntzen was to the security of the FBI, and what the Russians were going to do our agent in the KGB if they found out he was selling them to us. And they were sure to figure it out if I had to resort to having Arntzen taken out with no replacement.

Plus, we're not talking about a nice clean drill through the head here. They were on a plane: no guns, and it had to be quiet and quick."

"You?" Mulder said it half as a question, half as an accusation.

"Uh uh. The Russians know my ugly face far too well. If I go to a liquor store and buy Russian vodka alarm bells go off in the Kremlin. I had my day as an undercover agent, but after twenty years in the Company... I know them, and they know me." Dubretsky seemed ready to move the conversation on, but than he realized that Mulder couldn't let this go yet. So Dubretsky told him, figuring it wouldn't be the last hard fact Mulder would have to overcome. "Davis. Davis was on the plane too, and he did it."

"How?"

Dubretsky didn't answer, he just made a brief little gesture with one hand past the front of his throat.

Mulder contemplated him, dismay fighting with the need to hear what else Dubretsky had to say. Finally he looked away, back at the whitening dregs of his coffee.

"Wait a second..." Mulder lifted his head again, looking at Dubretsky. "You said the Russians were planning on putting Arntzen into the Bureau. How? Someone there must have been working with them...."

"Yeah. The name Alexander Krycek appeared on the intake list for Quantico, but it seemed pretty well impossible to trace who had managed to get it there. The best we could do was have Alex sit tight and hope that someone would appear out of the woodwork to claim him."

"And someone did?"

"And someone did. Towards the end of his time at the Academy."

"Who?"

Dubretsky knew that Mulder had already worked that out for himself a long time ago, so he just rendered the answer as a gesture, a mime of removing a cigarette from his mouth and holding it cupped in his fingers.

"He works for the RUSSIANS?!?" Mulder was stunned by this final excess of duplicity.

"He works for himself." Dubretsky smiled grimly, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening. "He approached Alex, or rather Arntzen, and cut him a deal. In return for certain small services, he would continue to preserve and protect his cover within the FBI. Failure to comply would result in Arntzen being exposed as a spy and sent back to Russia in disgrace. Alex showed a proper reluctance and then agreed."

"You know who he is." Dawning certainty in Mulder's voice.

"Yes I do. And I'm going to do you a big service Mister Mulder. I'm not going to tell you."

Mulder banged his empty mug down on the table, muscles tensing, ready to thrust up onto his feet.

"Leave it." Dubretsky just said the words, he didn't raise his voice, and though his face hardened he couldn't be said to be frowning as such. The only gesture he made was to lift one hand slightly, palm up to Mulder. But the effect was like someone pulling a plug on Mulder's aggression. Mulder could only think that Dubretsky was very used to being obeyed. He sat back, forcing himself to calm down and listen.

"If you know his name, he will kill you, no matter what it costs him. It is not my job to put you in that kind of danger Mister Mulder. I hear you call him the cancer man. I like that. It's appropriate. More than you know maybe."

"So you knew he was harbouring a Russian agent in the FBI. Why didn't you do something about it? Or is he beyond your reach too?"

"No one is beyond my reach Mister Mulder: a bullet in the head is no respecter of rank or person. But it was clear that this wasn't an isolated incident. I wanted to know how many more errand boys your 'cancer man' had salted away in the Bureau. We were in a position to extricate our agent in the KGB at a moment's notice, the Russians were viewing Arntzen as a long term investment, they were happy for him to beaver away in the FBI for the foreseeable future, and Alex was graduating Quantico with honours. I figured we'd let it roll and see what happened."

"And what did happen?"

"For a while, not much. Alex got a plum assignment straight out of the Academy, partnered with a veteran VCU agent. Hard to know if he got it because he earned it or because someone was pulling strings for him. Anyway, he took to it pretty well, he said he'd had all the education he could eat, he wanted some action. He might have made a good cop in different circumstances."

Mulder's eyebrows climbed at that, but he refrained from arguing. "And then?"

"And then, right around the last week of July ninety four, Cancer Man called in his marker. Alex's partner met with an... accident. Alex was a ten month rookie on his own, and he was told to submit a 302 to investigate the death of Doctor Grissom. Which was allowed."

"It shouldn't have been."

"No, of course not. It was Cancer Man's way of getting you two together."

"How did he know I'd find out about Grissom's... Jesus... that son of a bitch..." Mulder felt another section of his fragile world shift and crumble. "X. He left me a copy of the 911 tape. Was he... did he work for... No. He saved my life. He helped me."

"Ashton Rae. Lieutenant Colonel Ashton Rae. Yes, he worked for Cancer Man, nominally at least. But I figure he was working for someone else too, someone with a very different agenda from the Smoker."

"You knew him?"

"I knew of him. We walked parallel paths you might say. I know there were things he did, things he had to do, that sat badly with him. But he was afraid, and fear makes people pliable. I think towards the end even he didn't know what side he was on."

Mulder sat for a while, just trying to absorb that. He bent his head down into his hands, his fingers cupping his forehead as if trying to hold his fragmenting thoughts together physically.

"So Krycek has the file on Grissom's death, and I go to Skinner looking for the same." Mulder was picking his way over the chaos of his thoughts, trying to put the train of events together. "No." He looked up sharply. "Skinner was pissy with me about it, he sent me back to transcribing wiretap with a flea in my ear. I didn't think he was going to give me the case at all."

"He probably wasn't. Assistant Director Skinner was held personally accountable for what was seen as the fiasco of the X files project. He was under considerable pressure to keep you out of trouble - trouble meaning anything that could be even vaguely construed as X file type material. Which he was signally failing to do."

"So what happened?"

Dubretsky shrugged, massive movement of shoulders like the side of a building.

"Well, I wasn't there you understand, so I'm guessing. Maybe it was put to him that Agent Krycek might wish to take a lead from an older more experienced agent. And I'm sure he figured there was nothing to the case anyhow and what trouble could even you find in some guy having a heart attack in his hotel room? Anyhow, he ended up confirming the case assignment to Alex, on the understanding that you would be brought on board.

Needless to say, the fact that Cancer Man was going to all this trouble to have you paired up with his errand boy made you a subject of great interest to us. You were an unknown quantity to me, but I found out that your name was already well known to my own superior."

Mulder felt his heart stutter and stop.

"Who, who do you work for?"

"You know him yourself Mister Mulder. You met him once, on the lighted walkway in Central Park. Agent Scully met him at your father's funeral. You'll forgive me if I show some respect for his privacy and don't give you his real name. We can refer to him as... Gentry. Mister Gentry." Dubretsky's amused tone and sparkling eyes made Mulder resolve to sit down and play word games with the name 'Gentry' as soon as he got the chance. Clearly there was some connection between the word and the reality that Dubretsky appreciated.

In fact, the pun was on the man's middle name, Earl, and the fact that despite his beautifully polished and buffed persona, he was so far from being a member of the social elite that he had grown up without soles to his boots or a seat to his pants. Dubretsky admired and revered him as one of nature's aristocrats.

"And he knew me?"

"I gather he knew your father too, way back. He said he'd been tracking your progress since you managed to get the X files reopened round about the same time Alex came to work for the Company."

Dubretsky stalled out, wondering if he should intrude his own personal theories on the subject, but he decided to leave conjecture till he was out of facts. "He impressed on me, on Alex, how important it was that you be protected from Cancer Man, but also that it had to be done without you being aware of it. Protect you, protect Alex's cover, in that order."

"Sir!" Davis was in the doorway, eyes vivid with some suppressed emotion. Dubretsky was out of his chair and across the room in a couple of outsized strides. "What is it?"

Brenton was right at the door too. Mulder stood slowly, drawn by the intensity of their concern, though it had little to do with him. For the first time since he had left his apartment that evening, he was no longer at the centre of the storm.

"He's out of OR, they've taken him into the IC unit. It's gonna be a while before they know, but he came through the surgery at least."

Brenton had shed any trace of weakness: he said his piece firmly and even flashed Mulder a cool curious deep blue glance, as if measuring his reaction. Mulder wondered if Brenton could read his emotions, given that he could make no sense out of them himself.

"Stay with Mulder, I'm going to talk to the doctors." Dubretsky had one foot out the door when Mulder called after him.

"Agent Dubretsky, sir?" The honorific came out as if by instinct, though Skinner had constantly to yank it out of Mulder with a curt reminder.

"What is it Mister Mulder?" Dubretsky turned, locked eyes with Mulder.

"What happened then?" Mulder asked with naked uncertainty.

Dubretsky smiled. A small smile won out of the midst of concern for his agent and annoyance at what had happened and dread of what he would say to Krycek's sister when she arrived. But it was a smile none the less, and his mild pale eyes lit up, sparkling and shining.

"Well, that's when things got complicated Mister Mulder." He cocked his forefinger, pointed it at Mulder. "We'll talk more later."

THE END OF THE PROLOGUE.

9/29/1997

Absolution: Act One, the events of 'Sleepless' take on a rather different significance in the light of Chris Dubretsky's revelations.

 

* * *

 

Absolution: Act One By Rachel Lee Arlington.  
  
Summary: Krycek and Mulder's meeting and the events of 'Sleepless' given the illumination of hindsight. Part of the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle.  
CERT: R. This is turning out far more civilized than I thought it would. A very little slash UST by way of flavoring. A little violence, but Chris Carter put that in, not me. The F word well worked. (Alex is hitting his stride now.)  
DISCLAIMER: This is MINE MINE MINE. I thought of it, I wrote it, and if CC thinks I'm gonna give him any credit he's nuts. Okay so he gave us Alex Krycek, but he seems to be trying to take that favor back. One piece at a time.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is another episode in the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle. It comes after 'Absolution: Prologue' and well before phyre's 'Powerplay'. If you haven't read 'Prologue', do, or this is going to make exactly no sense at all. You need to know 'Sleepless' shot for shot to really get this, as to keep some kind of control over the K count I've pretty much skipped over the non Krycek parts of the plot.

* * *

These Men Of Honor II  
Absolution: Act One  
by Rachel Lee Arlington

To sleep, to dream.

To be or not to be, CIA, KGB or FBI, good guy bad guy, friend or foe. Alex Krycek razored off the last flecks of soap from his jaw then rinsed and dried his face without meeting his own eye in the mirror. He threw down the towel and went back out to the bedroom, combing his fingers through his hair, enjoying the feel of the clean damp strands before he had to clog them up again with hair oil. He opened one side of the closet, the mirror inside the door casting an unkind reflection of his bare torso. He grimaced, discontent at the sight of the spare twenty five pounds he'd put on to help along the resemblance between himself and Ishmar Arntzen. He'd been carrying the extra weight for almost two years now, and he wondered how hard it was going to be to get rid of it again when he finally got the chance.

His hand went over the row of hangers on the right side of the closet, over shiny suit shoulders, coarse cheap fabric, dark blue, gray, a particularly offensive muddy brown. Pointlessly his other hand strayed into the left side of the closet, stroked down the sleeve of a dark pine gray jacket of fine wool. Even with the extra weight he was carrying the sleek tailoring of that suit slimmed and smoothed his shape, and he enjoyed the soft limp feel of the cloth. Ruefully he took his hand back, and took out the mid gray suit from the right of the closet instead.

There were a pile of stiff overstarched white shirts folded on the top shelf, and he took one down, ignoring the other softer more expensive ones on the opposite side, pale tints of green and blue and ivory. All his ties were on the one rack inside the closet door, cheap synthetic red and blue and stripe mixed indiscriminately together with silk in tones of green and teal and mahogany. His hand hovered, as if he was in a position to choose according to taste, but he wasn't, and he pulled the red one free.

He dressed quickly, his mood turning blacker as he pulled on the uncomfortable unflattering clothes. He took up one wristwatch from the dresser, leaving behind the older more tasteful one his parents had given him as a birthday gift the year he left highschool. He pulled open a drawer and took out a waistholster, switching his gun from the shoulderholster he preferred to use. Quantico issued waistholsters: the habit of using the shoulder rig had been formed at Langley. He clipped the holster to the backof his belt, then before he put on his jacket he went through the revolting ritual of oiling his hair and combing it back from his forehead.

Krycek had never considered himself vain, though he was realistic enough to know that his passage through life had certainly not been made any rockier by his physical appearance, and he had strong likes and dislikes when it came to clothes. But it was only now, after two years of being saddled with this humiliating persona, that he understood just how much he had taken appreciative glances and flattering attentions as his due.

He had protested at the necessity for the charade, but Dubretsky had pulled him up short, reminding him that he wasn't meant to be an American, he was supposed to be a KGB Captain pretending to be an American. And as Dubretsky said with a good humored gleam in his eye, good taste was a concept alien to the KGB. "And besides," he had added, "if you're smart you'll let this work for you. Alex, you're young dumb and you know squat about anything. In this get up the Smoker may take you for a dumb Russkie, instead of a dumb CIA agent."

Krycek pulled on his jacket, noticing that it seemed even baggier and more shapeless than ever. He smiled humorlessly. Looked like the problem wasn't going to be dropping the twenty five pounds, it was going to be holding onto them much longer. He made a mental note to up the sugar level in his coffee again.

It was early enough for the highway to be almost clear, and Krycek was able to drive with only half his attention on the traffic and the rest rerunning the events of the previous night, and trying to second guess what the day would bring. One thing was for sure, the game was moving into a new phase.

His ten months in the FBI had been a bonus. There was no doubt his career was taking some unexpected turns: after starting out as a translator with the CIA he had found himself drawn into the unlikely operations of Christian Dubretsky's department and had finally fetched up in the VCU at the Bureau.

But the experienced agent he'd been partnered with had taught him more in those ten months than all his endless years of education at school and college and Langley and then Quantico.

Now his partner was stuck in the hospital with a plate and six pins in his leg after being the victim of a hit and run accident. Krycek expected to be assigned somewhere else for the duration: as a ten month rookie he had no hope of being let fly solo. But the assignment never turned up: he cooled his heels tying up the case they had been working on and waited for the Bureau to remember he existed. Then the Smoker called summoning him to a meeting and offering ice cold condolences on his partner's misfortune; and Krycek knew the accident was no accident.

They met in a room of the Hyatt Regency a little after one in the morning. The TV was on, spewing out some meaningless made in Hong Kong thriller, and the table was littered with cigarette packs and torn cellophane and three ashtrays in various states of overflow. There was a handgun and a thin manilla folder among the mess.

"Comrade Arntzen." The greeting was venomously sweet and mixed with tarry smoke. Krycek felt a cool wave of nausea well up inside and hid it as he had learned to do by dropping his eyes, his long black lashes veiling his expression in an insincere show of humility.

"Sir."

"I have an errand for you Comrade." The Smoker passed the folder to Krycek, who flicked it open to reveal several poor quality photocopies with the seal of the NYPD at the top of each sheet.

"What is this?" He could see perfectly well what it was, copies of an incident report regarding a false fire alarm call and the death of a man from cardiac arrest. But he'd been tutored to ask pretty pointless questions, on the principle that an irrelevant question frequently begets a relevant answer. Plus it helped to re enforce the Smoker's conviction that Krycek was incapable of thinking for himself.

"It's your errand. First thing this morning you will go to your ASAC and submit a 302 to investigate Doctor Grissom's death."

"I don't have a partner, they're not going to give me a case assignment on my own." The impossibility of the idea sharpened Krycek's tone, lifted it above his usual husky tenor.

"No? You'd be surprised what can happen when you have influential friends � Captain Arntzen."

Krycek swallowed down anything further he had to say, the corners of his mouth tensing into small creases as he forcibly held in his anger. He'd give a lot to tell this creep that 'Captain Arntzen' had had a bad trip to the States two years previously, and that the guy in the cheap suit was a CIA agent and you're under arrest for treason asshole. But he didn't.

"Then what?" He kept almost all of the disgust out of his voice.

"When your 302 comes back to you, as well as having your ASAC's approval, it will have a note from Assistant Director Skinner attached, to the effect that one Special Agent Fox Mulder requested the same assignment shortly after you did, and in view of your unfortunate solitary status, and given that Agent Mulder is a considerably more experienced agent than you are, Assistant Director Skinner will suggest that you take a lead from Agent Mulder on the case."

"But if they've given me a case number..."

"They can't reassign it, not without good cause. You will share this case with Agent Mulder. Don't let him take it away from you though. I expect you to stay with him, work with him, watch what he does."

"That's all: just watch him," Krycek said, clearly sceptical.

"For now. Don't worry, I don't want you to do anything wrong." The slack lined face hitched itself up into the horrible semblance of a smile. "On the contrary, I'd like you and Agent Mulder to get to be friends. The best of friends." The snake slither of that voice made Krycek shiver, ice trickling down his spine. His gaze snagged on yellowed fingertips delicately rolling a half smoked cigarette back and forth, a slow caressing motion that made his stomach lift and press at the back of his throat.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He dragged the words out, despite the weight of his certainty flattening his tone to something dry and dead.

"Mean? Why it means whatever you want it to Mister Arntzen. You don't have a girlfriend do you?"

"No." Jesus, my life is complicated enough right now without that. The last time I went this long without a date was before I hit puberty.

"Well, that's odd, a personable young man like yourself." Krycek wondered if that was sarcasm or a bad eye for detail. "Neither does Agent Mulder. And Lord knows I've had him introduced to a very suitable girl."

Krycek tried to think of something to say, but every possibility included the words 'CIA' and 'fuck you', so he stayed quiet and kept his eyes down. The Smoker lost interest in baiting him and dismissed him, saying only:

"Remember, first thing this morning. Agent Mulder will receive his tip off on the case before nine, so be sure you have a head start."

As soon as he left the Regency, Krycek called Dubretsky and told him what had happened. Dubretsky told him to come straight back out to the office, he'd make some calls and see if he could find out something about this Fox Mulder who had been unfortunate enough to catch the Smoker's attention.

Christian Dubretsky's standing joke was that his office kept the same hours as a convenience store, and the average age of the staff was about the same too. Krycek wasn't that surprised to arrive there at just before two in the morning and find it lit and occupied by Davis and Brenton. After his walk through the largely deserted night time corridors of the Pentagon, there was something almost welcoming about the bright busy clutter of the office.

"Krycek. Your mail is backing up." Brenton gestured with his pen to the desk nearest the door, where a pile of envelopes and paper slips had collected in the in tray. Krycek took them up, flicking through them, throwing some back into the tray, dropping some into the garbage.

"Nothing important. I'll come in over the weekend and clear it. Jesus, paper here, paper in the Bureau. Democracy is a plot by the paper manufacturers."

"Nice suit." Davis looked up from his files and acknowledged Krycek's presence for the first time.

"Screw you."

"Not in front of the Baptist."

Dubretsky came in just in time to see Brenton explode into red faced laughter.

"Gentlemen. Glad to see we're all so full of energy at this unsociable hour. Alex, welcome back to the right side of the river. Let's get to it, we only have about six hours before Alex has to be with his ASAC."

They gathered round, pulling their chairs in close to Dubretsky's desk, Krycek slipping off his jacket and loosening his tie, the other men already all in rolled shirtsleeves: Dubretsky's arms all sinew and scars, Davis's heavily muscled and lightly tanned, Brenton's fair and lightly freckled. A coffee jug made the rounds of the table, and Krycek fished a candy bar from his inside pocket. He ate it with evident reluctance.

"It seems our perfectly nice counter espionage operation has just taken an unexpected turn. Special Agent Fox Mulder is already known to our superior.

I'm not in position to give you much detail on this, but I can say that it's in connection with a matter of national security." Dubretsky looked up from his notes in time to savor the sharp glances of anticipation that crossed and recrossed between the young men around the desk. The more trouble they thought they were in, the happier they were.

"Three years ago Mister Mulder managed to get grudging permission to look into some otherwise deadended cases in the Bureau's files. A lot of them are frankly garbage: vampires werewolves and foxfire spirits." Brenton and Davis met and then avoided each other's gaze. Dubretsky's sly humor was legendary, and it was impossible to tell if he was serious or not right now. But Krycek lifted his head, recognition dawning in his eyes. That Mulder? Spooky Mulder? He'd heard stuff at Quantico, but had always assumed the stories were apocryphal. A warning to those showing tendencies towards... unorthodoxy.

"But some of them are the remains of breaches of security around highly classified military and scientific projects. And Mister Mulder seems to have an unerring instinct for going where he has no business being. Well, after a couple of years he'd evidently caused enough trouble that Mister Arntzen's employer," this with a humorous glance at Krycek, "felt that Mister Mulder needed something to distract him from his so called 'X' files."

"The suitable girl?" Ventured Krycek.

"Suitable for what, is the question. Agent Dana Scully was assigned to, I quote, 'de bunk' Mister Mulder's work."

"Close him down." This from Davis.

"Yes. But at the time of the assignment, Mister Mulder had four years experience as an FBI agent, all of it in the field. He's three years older than Miss Scully, he has connections in Congress, his father has connections in the State Department, and he has the undoubted advantage of being a man in a federal agency.

Miss Scully by contrast had spent less than two years in the FBI as a forensics instructor at the Academy. No field experience whatsoever. She was a young inexperienced girl trying to make her way in a man's world. She was the junior agent, yet she was expected to evaluate and report on his activities. Add to that the fact that Mister Mulder is known to be volatile, obsessive and unorthodox in his working methods. Any one see a problem on the horizon?"

General low level laughter around the table.

"So what way did it pan out? They get married or murder each other?" Asked Davis.

"Well they didn't get married, the Smoker was implying I was right up Mulder's alley, if you get my drift," Krycek said sourly.

"And they didn't murder each other either." Dubretsky was smiling slightly, just enough to deepen the creases around his eyes and brighten his glance. "They did the unexpected: they succeeded in working together. And they must have been moving closer to something the Smoker wants kept covered. Eight weeks ago Mister Mulder was taken hostage by an unnamed security agency." Dubretsky hesitated, saw three pairs of pleading eyes fixed on him: teal green, amber brown, dark blue. He smiled wider, snicked out a short laugh. "The NSA."

"Ha. Goddamn housekeepers." Davis voiced the general distaste. Dubretsky made no comment, but went on with his explanations.

"There was a trade of evidence, something went wrong and a member of the Secret Service was killed. Someone on about my rung of the ladder gentlemen, I hope you take that to heart. You playboys get out of hand and it's old soldiers like me who end up under the shady pines.

Anyhow, that gave them enough to close Mulder down and bust him right back down to bank fraud and social security swindles. Miss Scully is back in the cloistered sanctuary of the Academy with a bunch of dead guys."

"End of story?" Krycek knew it couldn't be.

"Far from it. Mulder has managed to get himself into hot water even without his X files. An unscheduled vacation in Puerto Rico for a start. With Miss Scully in attendance."

"I thought you said they didn't work together anymore?" Krycek was sure he'd been paying attention.

"They don't, she went on her own initiative."

"So they *are* involved," Davis smiled, with the air of having made a great discovery.

"Maybe. Maybe, God forbid, they are that rarest of all things, a man and a woman who are friends, good friends, and would take a risk for each other."

Dubretsky caught the raised eyebrows and curled lips around the table. "Stranger things, gentlemen, just because none of us have been blessed doesn't mean it's outside the realms of extreme possibility."

"Seems more likely she's well aware of the Smoker's agenda and is playing along, helping Mulder dig himself in deep enough for the Bureau to kick his ass clean over the bleachers." Krycek knew that his own convoluted life tended to make him suspect everyone of having motives within motives.

"But why didn't she just recommend that he be closed down like she was meant to?" Davis found himself defending the unknown Miss Scully with unexpected interest.

"I don't know." Krycek shrugged, then tried theories on for size. "Say she had, he would have had a good chance of overthrowing that recommendation at a hearing. Like the boss says, she's young, she's inexperienced, he could appeal her decision and win no problem. The Bureau's all about seniority, believe me, as the low guy on the totem pole I know all about it. Maybe they don't just want him out of the... what was it? X files? Maybe they want him out of the Bureau and she's to make sure he gets into enough trouble to let them do that. Maybe she's playing a long game. Maybe she's counting on being Mrs Mulder. I don't know."

"Whatever." Dubretsky hadn't enough time for the certainties, let alone the possibilities. "One thing we can be sure of, Arntzen's assignment to Mister Mulder is not intended to improve Mister Mulder's quality of life. It has been strenuously underlined to me by our superior that Mister Mulder should be allowed to go where he will and do what he will, given that other agencies will be attempting to curtail his activities. Our job is to make sure he's still in a condition to get into trouble. And that means preserving Alex's cover too. If we're forced to pull Alex they'll put someone else with Mulder. Someone *not* on our side."

"The Smoker seemed pretty sure about how Assistant Director Skinner is going to jump. Do you think he's..." Krycek trailed off, and everyone waited for Dubretsky's reaction. It was one thing to know that the Smoker had strings on one or more FBI agents, but the thought that he might have an Assistant Director in his pocket was chilling.

"The AD is under pressure from the Bureau regarding his handling of Agent Mulder. There's just no way of knowing how much he's being pushed, how much he's being led, how much he's going willingly. All we can do is wait and watch and hope things become clearer." Dubretsky's matter of fact attitude reassured the others. "Alex I think you should go home and get a few hours rest. We'll stay here and see what else we can dig up for you."

"Thank you sir." Krycek took up his jacket.

"I'll walk out with you, I could do with the air." Dubretsky casually pushed away from the desk and the two men went out together. Dubretsky waited till they were in the entry hall before he said what was on his mind.

"Alex, there's one more point I think we should consider."

Krycek waited.

"You said the Smoker implied that Mister Mulder is a homosexual."

Krycek felt his cheeks grow hot. He was far from prudish by nature, but Dubretsky preserved such an aura of cool virtue that the very word 'sex' coming out of his mouth was almost unimaginable.

"Yes."

"You think he expects you to seduce Mulder?"

"Maybe not 'expects'. I think he's hoping. Maybe I'm supposed to finish the job Miss Scully neglected to start."

"It would make sense given his choice of partners for Mulder. An inexperienced attractive young woman. And when that didn't work..."

"An inexperienced..." Krycek let the rest of the sentence trail away, but his mouth curved in a very slight smile.

"... attractive young man." Dubretsky finished for him.

"Are you hitting on me sir?" Krycek's voice was husky with suppressed laughter.

"You're not my type, I'm too old fashioned for all this bisexual stuff." Dubretsky was smiling too, bright eyed. "So what's going to happen? Can you deal with it?" Dubretsky's pale hazel eyes turned from shining and amused to razor sharp. Krycek stood still and silent for a moment, thinking it over. Dubretsky watched, wondering if the hesitation was over the truth, or over the wisdom of telling him. "I'm aware that Davis is one," he volunteered, intending to indicate that no matter what Krycek's answer was, Dubretsky wasn't going to think less of him.

"Did you work that out all by yourself sir?" Krycek lost the serious set to his mouth again.

"Yeah, I was pretty proud of myself." Joking. Lying too. Davis had volunteered the fact when Dubretsky had first approached him with a view to recruiting him. It would never have occurred to Dubretsky to ask. He saw a clear distinct line between useable information and pointless scandal. It wasn't even useful as material for blackmail. Why resort to discussing a man's sexuality when he could be held accountable for over three dozen assassinations? "You want me to try and guess about you?"

"No, I'd be afraid you'd strain a sensibility. I've... em..." Krycek folded his arms, suddenly engrossed in the appearance of the floor. "I've been with guys, girls, whatever. If someone's attractive I don't really think their gender is an issue. But... I've never even seen this guy, and besides, it's one thing having sex with someone 'cos you want to, it's another doing it for... well, I swore to serve and defend, I just didn't think sex was included in the deal." He looked up again, met Dubretsky's gentle gaze. "I don't know sir. I'm going to do what it takes, and I hope I can do *whatever* it takes, but right now, I don't know."

"That's fair enough Alex, I can't ask for more than that. Go home and get some rest, things are going to get tougher from here on in."

"Goodnight sir."

Krycek figured the ASAC must have been forewarned: he took the 302 from Krycek without comment, though the incident of a rookie agent turning up first thing in the morning with a request for a solo case assignment should have been worth some reaction.

The 302 arrived back signed off by the ASAC and clipped to a numbered case folder with another 302 pinned into the front, this one filled out by Agent Mulder and signed off by AD Skinner. And sure enough there was a note in the AD's aggressive scrawl to the effect that as Agent Krycek's 302 was filed almost two hours before Agent Mulder's, and signed off on while Skinner had still been considering Agent Mulder's application, he suggested that Agent Krycek consult with Agent Mulder on the handling of the case.

Krycek flipped open the folder and started rifling through the contents. He located the name of the investigating police detective and reached for his phone. He wanted to get the facts straight, then he'd go and find Mulder.

"I'm looking for Agent Mulder?" Krycek stuck his head round a partition and spoke to the two agents in deep conversation at the desk.

"Eh, no, sorry. Don't know him."

"Thanks." Krycek turned away, scanned over the open plan cattle market of the bull pen. Maybe the guy didn't exist, maybe the Smoker just made him up. That was the third time he'd asked about Mulder to be met with blank ignorance. Whoever the guy was, he wasn't Mister Popularity. He walked a little way between two more desks and scanned around looking for someone who looked really unsocial.

"You okay kid?" A passing agent took pity on Krycek's evident confusion.

"Yeah, I'm looking for an Agent Mulder?"

"Way the heck over there, right beside that black partition, see it?"

"Yeah, thanks very much."

"Just watch your ass, the guy's a spook."

Krycek resisted the urge to answer that: no, despite the nickname, he's a fed, I'm the spook.

He threaded his way down the side of the office, making out a bowed head with a pair of earphones on. He came to a halt a few yards from the desk, lifting his chin, squaring his shoulders. Get this right, he silently admonished himself. This guy doesn't know it but he's in danger. And the Company and Dubretsky and the whole shebang are trying to keep him alive, but I'm the point man. Right now it all rests on me.

Having thoroughly scared himself, Krycek tried to find the right words to say, to fit himself into the fine mesh of intrigue and deceit that was weaving itself around Agent Mulder. He watched the other man typing industriously, then stopping the tape machine.

Ah to heck with it, I'll open my mouth and see what comes out, he thought. He drew breath, but Mulder had turned on the tape again and Krycek swallowed the non existent introduction. He waited another second, glancing at passing agents and getting edgier and antsier all the time.

Mulder was a million miles away, listening to Desiree give Johnny the ennth degree about not turning up for their date. Given that they had spent almost an hour on the phone settling the time terms and price, Mulder was almost as peeved as Desiree by the no show.

The abiding interest of the criminal classes isn't money, it's sex, Mulder told himself, wondering if he should go for a fully phonetic spelling in his transcript, to keep the flavor of the dialogue. I'm definitely missing out.

"You comin' ovah or what? You said you was coming ovah two hours ago, an' I'm waitin' heeya like some stoopid bimbo who ain't got nuthin' bedda to do wid my time than just sit around and wait for someone like you..."

"Agent Mulder."

His name laced across Desiree's complaints, and Mulder lifted his head, pulling off the earphones at the same time.

Well, if I have to screw him I guess I won't actually throw up or anything, thought Krycek.

Oh wow, thought Mulder, where the hell did *you* appear from? For one entire second his instincts got completely away from his intellect and enjoyed themselves eating up the almost unnaturally rich blue green shade of the guy's eyes and the dark delicate arch of his eyebrows and the careful shape of his mouth, engineered to within microns of perfection.

Then his brain caught up with his artistic sensibilities and clubbed them pretty well unconscious. Bad suit, worse tie, really worse hair. Who is this pleb? Then he registered the case folder in the pleb's hand and lost interest in anything else.

Krycek introduced himself by way of his name on the 302, holding out his hand to Mulder in what he hoped was a show of hearty good nature. Mulder left him with his hand stuck out, blandly ignoring the gesture. Fine, thought Krycek retrieving his hand from mid air. Be an asswipe.

He lost track of his annoyance in outlining to Mulder his conversation with Detective Horton. The case was odd enough to have piqued his interest, and when he asked Mulder for his opinion, it was less out of a desire to establish his persona as the eager young acolyte than from genuine curiosity.

But Mulder didn't condescend to answer one way or the other: he made a patronizing reference to Krycek's 'show and tell' and gathered up his jacket and the folder and blithely threw back over his shoulder 'I'll straighten things out with Skinner'.

Fuck you, for a thousand reasons, thought Krycek. You don't shake me that easy. He cracked out Agent Mulder's name, let his mask of youth and uncertainty slip just a fraction, let the hard edge he was gradually acquiring show for just a second as he fought his corner, argued that the case had been assigned to him. Fueling his annoyance was the knowledge that while he had never been short of good cases, other agents of his age and status would have given their eyeteeth to get an assignment like this, and might not have had the moxie to defend it from the depredations of Agent Mulder.

Mulder seemed to back off readily enough, and though Krycek hastily withdrew again into the role of the ingenue, he couldn't stifle a sly smile as he went to sign out a car for them. This is going to be easy, he mentally congratulated himself.

This is going to be fucking hell, he stormed internally as he strode back after a fruitless wait of over a quarter of an hour at the carpool desk. You smarmy bastard, he raged internally as he paced back and forth in front of Mulder's desk. I can't believe I fell for that. I can't believe I lost him.

Two minutes, less than two minutes, and I lose him. Shit! What the hell do I do now? Just sit here and wait for him to show? Fuck that, Dubretsky will have my balls for a desk ornament if he thinks I just sat back and let Mulder go anywhere he pleases...

Panic and anger dropping away from him, a sudden smile easing the tight tense set of his mouth. He took the keys of the requisitioned car from his pants pocket, tossed them upwards in high good humor. The morning traffic would have cleared, and a drive to Connecticut would make a change from the office.

The sight of a cab parked on the curb outside the clinic confirmed his guess. He parked a little way back, then double checked by asking the driver for a description of his fare before he paid him off. He decided against going into the clinic and asking for Mulder, instead going back to his car and sitting there to wait. He tuned the radio to a jazz station, tapping out the rhythms on the steering wheel with his fingers, grinning to himself in anticipation of Mulder's reaction when he came out and found his cab gone and his eager young partner back.

Sure enough, after only a few more minutes Mulder emerged from the clinic entrance, striding out till he saw the empty space at the kerb, then stopping, looking left and right in obvious consternation. Krycek turned off the radio, wiped the smile off his face and plastered on a scowl instead and got out of the car, slamming the door hard enough to draw Mulder's attention. The look of exasperation on Mulder's face when he saw Krycek coming towards him more than repaid the anxious moments in the bull pen.

But amusing as the game was, Krycek didn't intend to play more than once. He strode towards Mulder ready and willing to fight this out there and then.

The 'bad date' remark was out of his mouth before he had a chance to wonder about its appropriateness. He sincerely hoped that it was the Smoker's unpleasant insinuations and Dubretsky's austere concern on the subject that were putting the subject of sex so close to the tip of his tongue. If things were going to take that turn they'd do so with him keeping his head clear and his mind on the main chance, not stumbling into it for no reason but that Agent Mulder really was rather attractive in a sulky sort of way.

That petulant set to Mulder's mouth pulled him up short. It wasn't going to help the already fraught situation if they came to an open breach after only a few hours acquaintance. So he kept hold of his temper and sweetened his reproaches with a little flight of hero worship, drawing on what he remembered from the Academy. Mulder's face softened, anger giving way to a sort of flattered contrition. Krycek let his own expression smooth, waiting with heartfelt anticipation for Mulder's reply. Then the damn cellphone in Mulder's jacket pocket rang and the moment was lost.

After assuring his caller that he'd be wherever it was he planned on going 'in two hours', Mulder hung up and headed for the driver's door of the car.

Krycek followed casually, snagging the keys out of his pants pocket. Mulder jerked at the cardoor, looked genuinely puzzled when it wouldn't budge. Krycek froze his face in lines of blank indifference, holding his amusement to a green glint in his eyes and a tight little crease at the corner of his mouth as he held the keys aloft.

"Where we goin'?"

"Back to the Academy."

"Great." Krycek turned against the cardoor, subtly shouldering Mulder to one side as he put the key in the lock.

"I'll drive." Mulder was hovering just behind Krycek.

"Sure. When you sign the car out, you drive, when I do I drive, I think that's fair." Krycek got into the car and closed the door before Mulder had a change to argue, and Mulder couldn't stand there without looking like a complete idiot, so he had to stalk around the front of the car and get into the passenger seat. To avoid giving him any further cause for complaint Krycek slammed into gear and pulled away with a flashy squeal of tire rubber.

Two hours my ass, he thought to himself. You wanna make Washington in two hours from Connecticut, fine, I can do that. But if I get busted for speeding one more time even a CIA ID isn't gonna stop them taking my license.

"So who's doing the autopsy?" Krycek asked Mulder as they walked the corridor to one of the autopsy bays at the Academy.

"Agent Scully." Mulder's voice was tight, still annoyed about what he thought of as Krycek's highhanded attitude about the car. Funny, the last thing he'd thought of Scully as a partner was that she was accommodating; but now he realized just how much he had taken her placid forgiving nature for granted. He'd forgotten that with a male partner everything was a power issue.

"Scully?" Krycek repeated, hoping to coax some kind of voluntary remark from Mulder that might serve as a clue to the nature of their relationship, but Mulder wasn't giving. Krycek was already second guessing the wisdom of having insisted on driving, wondering if the aggressive way he had cut in and out of lanes and jumped lights to save every second he could had betrayed rather more nerve and certainty than he wanted Mulder to factor into their relationship. So when they got to where they were going, Krycek consciously hitched his shoulders up and tucked his chin down and did his best impersonation of an eager beaver blue flame geek with a poker up his ass.

The incisive stench of disinfectant and the raw meat smell of Doctor Grissom made his stomach tighten, though it was the formaldehyde that was mostly to blame. He'd been in too many charnel house crime scenes during his ten months with the VCU for the smell of blood to offend him still. But the lab smell was reacting rather unfavorably with the taste of candy in his mouth: he had eaten a bar on his way in from the car. Mulder was introducing him rather gracelessly and grudgingly to Agent Scully, and she was greeting him with a tight superior smile, like he was her kid sister's no hope date.

She sketched a gesture that could have been interpreted as an invitation to shake hands, and he stalled out for a second, caught between his natural inclination to go ahead and take her hand despite the scum of blood and tissue streaking her glove, and his desire to project himself as too raw and too delicate to be any kind of threat. In one more second he would have made a decision one way or the other but it was too late, Agent Scully elbowed her way past him without another word, and Mulder went with her.

What a cow, Krycek laughed to himself internally as he reeled his hand back in. There's no way she's having sex with Mulder, there's no way that bitch would condescend to have sex with anyone. He turned round, annoyance and vindictive amusement and determination to play his part all colliding with a sudden rush of candy flavored heart burn and the unexpected sight of Doctor Grissom with his outsides mostly intact and his insides neatly arranged on either side of him.

Krycek coughed hard, turning away for a second till he had regained his composure. He looked back in time to intercept the look of weary resignation that Mulder was exchanging with Agent Scully. Yeah, Krycek mentally addressed Mulder, I wonder how well you did your first time out. He cast another sidelong glance at Doctor Grissom, confirming that the sight although unpleasant wasn't half as gruesome as what he had witnessed at some crime scenes.

Agent Scully was giving a pretty puzzling account of what she had found during her autopsy, but the thing that really had Krycek's attention riveted to her was the way Mulder was bending down, his head a bare couple of inches away from hers, and the way she dropped her voice, so that her cool scientific account came out sounding like the warmest tenderest endearments. Krycek might just as well not have existed for all the attention they were paying him, they were so intent on each other.

I take it all back, he thought to himself ruefully. There's sure as hell something going on between them, any second now he'll bend down that last inch and kiss her.

He found himself looking rather speculatively at Agent Scully. There was no doubt that scrubs and a lab coat were not the most alluring attire in the world: it was impossible to tell what kind of figure was concealed under them, she could have been nine months pregnant for all he knew. But figuring from the soft curve of her cheek and the little round flesh at the tip of her chin, he would have expected lush curves rather than lean hardness. The small part of her hair visible above the nylon net was an unexpected flash of russet, and she had a small fair mole between her lip and her nostril that kept dragging his attention back to the movement of her mouth as she spoke.

But overall he thought her short plump and pale. The Smoker had made a strange estimation of Mulder's tastes if she was meant to be the fatal siren.

It was only when Agent Scully reached a complete impasse in her strange discourse, and Mulder turned his head to look accusingly at Krycek as if it was all his fault that Krycek realized his eyebrows had climbed almost to his hairline as he studied this unlikely couple. He hastily smoothed his face out and tried to look interested and indifferent and puzzled and benign all at the same time.

He and Mulder left, went back to the JEH and he went through the paperwork of giving the car back to the motorpool. When he left the desk he was surprised to find Mulder still hovering near the exit out to the parking garage.

"Everything okay?" He asked warily, sorting the keys for his own car out on his keychain.

"Yeah, fine." Mulder looked intensely uncomfortable, but at the same time there was a faint trace of warmth in his expression, a softness to his dark lichen gray eyes. "Look, about earlier... I didn't... I don't mean..." He trailed off, suddenly enthralled by the edge of a carpet tile curling up from the floor at the toe of his shoe. Krycek, enchanted, saw the slow creep of a faint rose flush over Mulder's cheekbones, and his own lips curled into a slight smile.

"It's fine, you were right, you don't know me from Adam, you've no reason to want me hanging around. But we're working this case together, I'd appreciate a chance at least." Krycek said it crisply, a simple statement of fact. Mulder looked up sharply, as if he hadn't realized Krycek was still there, and looked at him with narrowed eyes. There was so much happening behind those eyes, too much for Krycek to even begin to decipher, so he disengaged.

"See you tomorrow," he said, gesturing with his carkeys, a sort of 'I have to go my car is waiting'.

"Yeah, sure." Mulder said the words without inflection, and stood watching as Krycek turned and walked away. Krycek knew he was watching, he could feel that gray green gaze burning between his shoulder blades through the loose folds at the back of his jacket.

The following morning when Krycek left his apartment and went to get his car from the small lot at the back of the building, Davis was leaning on the hood, trim stone colored suit jacket open, exposing his snow white shirt and caramel colored silk tie. His face was raised, eyes closed like a sleek honey blond cat as he soaked up the early sunshine.

"Krycek." He said it when Krycek was still twenty feet away.

"I hate the way you do that, it's fuckin' creepy."

Davis opened his eyes, bright tiger brown sparkling with amusement.

"What's happening?" Krycek asked.

"Here, early birthday gift." Davis held out a large manilla envelope which Krycek took and opened. Inside was a crime scene report complete with photographs, and a copy of the preliminary report from a medical examiner.

"After you spoke to Dubretsky last night an' told him about Grissom gettin' cooked without a fire, he had us look out for anythin' similar coming through the NYPD. I drew a blank, but Boy Brenton found this." He watched while Krycek scanned the pages, eyebrows drawing in in a frown of concentration, deep crease across the bridge of his nose.

"Great... this is great..." Krycek sounded puzzled but determined.

"So give. What's goin' on?" Davis tapped the edge of the sheet Krycek was reading to draw his attention.

"Damned if I know. Makes you wonder how much someone has to believe something before it becomes true..."

"Not that." Davis frowned hard, one baby soft crease appearing between his fine fair eyebrows. "I mean with Mulder and the lovely Miss Scully."

"Lovely?" Krycek repeated critically.

"We got the photos yesterday, and intercepts on the phones. She's a peach."

"If you say so. She's a brass bound bitch as far as I can see. If they're doing it they're using a petri dish and a pipette."

"Re'hee'heely." Davis was in high good humor.

Krycek shook his head and smiled. "Get off my car, I have to get to work."

Mulder was already at his desk when Krycek got to the office, and for a second Krycek had a sense of deja vu, as if they were re running the previous day's meeting, with Krycek arriving file in hand and trying to get Mulder to accept the bearer along with the gift. But this time there was no hostility in Mulder's attitude. He perched on the edge of his desk, arms folded, and listened attentively, looking from the pinboard on the wall to Krycek and back with the same good humored interested approbation in his expression for both of them.

Having spoken to the detective handling the case and to the Medical Examiner, Krycek was more puzzled than ever. He laid out his evidence before Mulder, editing of course where the information had come from. And then, for a single spinning moment he felt them working as a team, piecing the thing together, each picking up a little shard of fact and finding it fitted the one the other was holding.

Once they had made the connection between Grissom and Willig, the logical thing to do was track down the rest of the unit. But that information wasn't on the general data base, it was kept on file in the Bureau's central library in New York, which meant they could check that out and maybe take a look at the crime scene too. This time Mulder signed out the car from the motorpool.

By the time they had fetched up at the nurses' station at Orange County Medical Center listening to Cole's doctor denying any knowledge of Cole's discharge, Krycek had a distinct feeling that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ended up through the looking glass. And not the least of the strangeness in the situation was that Mulder didn't look particularly put out: on the contrary, he seemed to have almost expected this.

When Mulder's cellphone rang and he stepped away to answer it, Krycek was still watching him and he saw the way Mulder's face closed down, took on a careful wary expression that made Krycek's nerves wind, his skin tighten inanticipation. But when Mulder hung up and came back to the desk, and Krycek inquired lightly if everything was okay, Mulder didn't even acknowledge the question. Then Krycek's phone went off, and it was his turn to retire to the opposite side of the corridor.

"Krycek."

"Listen to this, you're gonna love it." Davis's long drawl made Krycek turn his back to Mulder, tuck the phone very tight against his cheek. He heard the click of a tape machine being turned on, the faint resonance to the voice that told him he was hearing a second hand conversation.

"*Mister Mulder. I've obtained some information which may shed some light on your current work. But. You must exercise discretion. If anyone follows you, I won't be there.*"

"I didn't catch the name." Krycek didn't think Mulder was paying him any attention, he could hear the strand of conversation spinning out behind him, but he kept his voice casual on the off chance.

"Jesus give me a minute..." Davis's voice went muffled as he covered the phone, spoke to someone else with him. "Got it. Oh my. At the very least the phone being used belongs to Lieutenant Colonel Ashton Rae, Army Intelligence. I didn't realize Mulder had friends in the army."

"I'm not sure he does. Is there anything I can do?" Said in a very easy uninterested tone.

"Stand back, let him go to the meet. I'll tag along at a discreet distance and make sure he doesn't get into trouble. Make sure Colonel Rae is using his own phone."

"Fine, thanks for calling."

"You are *so* welcome."

Krycek had to swallow the smartass retort that was burning at the tip of his tongue. He hung up, tucked the phone back into his jacket and went back to Mulder.

From the hospital they went to a motel, checked in. Krycek could see an edgy jittery tension in every movement Mulder made, every short grudging word he said. It was laughably easy for Krycek to act tired, to tell Mulder he was going to take a shower and watch the TV news. Mulder almost stuttered he was so eager to volunteer that he was going to do the same. Krycek went to his room, was there in time to twitch back the curtain and see Mulder getting back into the car and pulling out of the parking lot. There was no sign of Davis, but that didn't mean he wasn't there.

Krycek had thrown his holdall onto the bed, and now he threw himself down beside it. He closed his eyes, tried to figure out if he really was tired or not, but he was trying to hold so many different personas in his mind at the same time that he couldn't trace back the thread that lead to himself clearly enough to tell.

The sound of his phone trilling again in his jacket pocket jerked him out of the restful blank he had dropped into. He snagged the phone out without sitting up.

"Krycek."

"Agent Krycek? This is Detective Horton, we spoke earlier when you put out your APB."

"Yeah, hi." Krycek tried to get his brain back in gear.

"We think we have your guy."

"What? Where?" Wide awake now.

No sooner had he hung up on Horton than his phone rang again, this time it was Davis, warning him that Mulder was on his way back. Rae's identity had been confirmed, and Davis volunteered that Mulder had received a large envelope or file from the Colonel. Krycek hung up on Davis and went outside, reached the sidewalk just as Mulder drove round the corner to the entrance way of the motel. Krycek caught the look of weary exasperation on Mulder's face when he saw his rookie partner dogging his steps again, but by this stage Krycek's ten months in the VCU and the two dead bodies this case had yielded so far were putting an edge to his attitude that had very little to do with his dues to the Agency or to Christian Dubretsky. He wanted this case solved.

Krycek did ask Mulder where he'd been, but he barely even waited for Mulder to just ignore the question before telling him about Horton's call. He had to make himself backtrack and ask again, try to make it sound like he was at least interested. Mulder cleared his throat, but still didn't answer.

Pounding up the stairs of the crumby motel building where Cole had been spotted, Krycek had a blissful sense of clarity and simplicity. He stepped forwards eagerly, ID'd himself and Mulder to Horton. Horton was trying to give them a ten second rundown of the situation as the three of them climbed the staircase, and even the lightening crack of two gunshots and the ragged sound of a woman screaming had a reassuring sort of solidity about them.

Krycek ripped his gun free of its holster and plunged down, crouched on the stairway, heart thumping in his ears, breath coming in short shallow jerks. He threw one vivid glance at Mulder, then thrust up onto his feet again and lunged up the last few steps onto the landing. Mulder was right behind him, and for one brief second Krycek realized that he hadn't considered the fact that FBI agents sometimes ended up in hazardous situations, even without the benefit of the Smoker's machinations. How far was he expected to go to protect Mulder from the vagaries of fate, he wondered. He kept to the center of the hallway, didn't give Mulder room to push past him.

Cole was gone, but his tracks were there all right. Two police officers who had apparently tried to kill each other. Krycek got away from the bodies on the floor as soon as other officers arrived, went through to where Mulder was leaning out a window, trying to see down into the narrow alley below.

It's you, Krycek mentally addressed Mulder. You cause this. My life was complicated, but you're turning it into some kind of bad dream, with no rules and no logic. What the hell are you?

It was a long night. There was all the inevitable hanging around and retelling the same sparse facts over and over to half a dozen different officers and drinking lukewarm takeout coffee and watching the bloodstains on the carpet turning to rust. One of the injured men had been pronounced at the hospital, the other was hanging on by a thread. Mulder and Krycek went down to the precinct headquarters and went through the whole process for another hour or so.

When they finally gave up and went back to the motel, Krycek threw himself face down on the bed and wished for sleep. The sweet darkness swirled up like smoke and he was just losing his grip on his consciousness when his phone rang inside his jacket and he clawed his way back up into the light, almost sobbing with tiredness.

"Krycek." His voice was muffled by the pillow under his cheek.

"Comrade Arntzen."

Krycek scrambled up, onto his knees, off the bed, onto his feet.

"What do you want?" That came out too edgy, too angry. He let his voice lift and narrow into a less certain tone. "Where are you?"

"I'm just across the street Comrade. It's a pleasant lovely night, you should step out, stretch your legs, take a breath of air. Talk to an old friend."

"I'll be there."

The Smoker was sitting in a car parked on the opposite side of the street. Krycek got into the passenger seat, his eyes smarting from the combination of cigarette smoke and lack of sleep, kept his head turned away as far as possible, listened to that smooth slither of words with a kind of horrified fascination. The darkness and the strangeness of the night's events and the lingering sense of nightmare falseness made this man a creature of the dream time, not something real, not something human.

Krycek gave a grudging account of the investigation, while the Smoker smiled bloodlessly to himself, even snickered softly at hearing how Mulder had tried unsuccessfully to dump his new partner.

"And Cole. Where is he now?"

"We lost him. But Mulder seems to think he has a lead on him. He said there's someone we should go see in the morning."

"Indeed..." Hooded eyes narrowed, thin gleam of a razor's edge seen through a veil of white smoke. "When you find Cole, kill him."

"What?!?" Anger, disgust, outrage. I'm not going to do that. I'm... I'm an FBI agent? Well CIA for sure. The Company isn't as bloody as it's painted.

"You heard me." Whip crack voice, the cigarette's glowing tip jerking in the gloom. "Spare me your protests, and your scruples. Your charming display of reluctance. You forget, Comrade Arntzen, I know you. I know what you are."

Krycek had to choke down the hard hot lump stuck in his throat, had to sit there and burn quietly. He forced out the words with carefully controlled venom.

"Are you going to tell me why?"

"Yes, yes I am. For all your bridling and shying, you've done well enough up until now. I shall pay you in a coin I know you appreciate: information. Cole is the legacy of an ill judged piece of military research. If he has been the means of removing all other traces of the project, well and good. When you kill him and retrieve any material Mulder has in his possession relating to the case, the subject will be closed."

Krycek flashed one acid glance at the other man.

"What kind of 'material'?" He asked, his mind running rapid circles, wondering if the Smoker knew about Rae.

"Whatever kind you can find. I will have his home and office thoroughly searched, and Agent Scully's office too. You need only concern yourself with what he has with him here."

When Krycek got out of the car he was distantly aware that he was shaking. A rapid uneven sick shiver, fluttering and agitating his heartbeat, tightening his stomach. He stood on the kerb, watched the car pull away, then closed his eyes, listening to his own disquiet, trying to give it a name. Fear? Anger?

Disgust?

Anticipation?

"What exactly are you doin' standin' out on the sidewalk with your eyes closed? Waitin' to be shot?"

Krycek's eyes flashed open, surprised but not alarmed. Davis was looking at him with a characteristic blend of amusement and wariness.

"He wants me to kill Cole." Krycek was hoarse, a gravel sound far beyond the usually gentle husk of his voice.

"Oh." In the night, Davis's eyes lost their warm amber lights, and became black. A side gleam from a passing car reflected weirdly in his gaze, a glow of yellow green like a cat's retinas. "You gonna do it?"

"I don't know. Arntzen would do it. If I don't, he'll know I'm not Arntzen."

They stood for a long moment, looking at each other, trying to read the other man's emotions. Trying to read their own.

"How do you do it?" Asked Krycek. Davis made a tiny gesture of turning his head, the smallest negation.

"You've done it yourself."

"I shot an armed suspect who wouldn't drop his weapon when ordered. I was looking into the muzzle of the gun and I could see his knuckle turning white. He was so jacked up he wouldn't have stopped if I'd kneecapped him. I shot him. I was sick to my stomach for a week, and I still get cold when I think about it. I don't think I could do it if I didn't think I was going to die."

"Yeah, the first time..." There was something finedrawn, wiretight, about the set of Davis's sweet mouth. "It gets easier Alex. It gets real easy real fast. That's the part that's frightening." He stepped back, smiled, turning back into the good looking good natured man Krycek knew. "Well, you have to find him first, no point worrying about anything else till then."

"Yeah." Krycek sighed a grudging smile, turned away and went back to the motel. Back to his bed, and after only a short time, back to sleep.

Davis, like Krycek, was not the type to lie awake and worry. It was the following day before he went back to tugging and pulling at the problem, trying to figure if Krycek could do what he had to in order to maintain his cover as Arntzen. By the time Davis had settled in with the guys monitoring Agent Mulder's phone calls, he had figured out exactly what was wrong with the operation.

He's supposed to screw Mulder and kill some guy. Goddamn, I wish I looked like Arntzen, this job was made for me.

He leaned back, one handmade leather brogue stuck up on the edge of the desk, rumpled his hands over the soft feathery crop of his blond hair, then smoothed his palms over it again.

"Call outgoing."

Davis sat up, snagged himself a pair of earphones and held one up to his ear.

"*Scully*."

Davis mimed the action of his heart beating with his hand against the front of his fine linen shirt, smiling.

"*It's me.*"

"*Mulder, where are you?*"

"*Back at the hospital. The second officer is still in a coma, so I don't think we can count on him to tell us what happened.*"

Davis was putting sugar in his coffee one handed, accepting a hard copy of the previous night's calls, getting his foot back up on the desk, relishing Scully's soft voice without paying a huge amount of attention to the substance of her conversation. It was only when Mulder began to put forward his theory that Cole was somehow *dreaming* these people to death that Davis lifted his head, amber eyes wide, a disbelieving laugh rippling around his mouth, meeting the equally stunned gaze of the other agents.

"Jesus. He's a nutcase."

"Hush up, listen." Davis had caught Krycek's name.

"*Sounds like your new partner's working out.*"

"*He's alright. He could use a little more seasoning and some wardrobe advice...*" Davis snorted coffee onto his three hundred dollar tie. "*... but he's okay. He's a lot more open to extreme possibilities than - *"

"*Than I was?*" Davis stopped dabbing at his tie, enchanted and stricken by the wistful hurt in Scully's tone. He listened spellbound to the rest of the conversation, the notes of tenderness and hesitation in both their voices, the long uncertain silence before Scully hung up. Like her, he listened to the empty space of the dead line for several seconds before he put down the earphone.

"What do you make of that?" Asked one of the other agents, rewinding the tape of the call.

"She thinks she's losing him. He hardly knows Krycek, but she thinks she's losing him..." Davis said it softly, gazing off into the distance, not seeing the weirded out expression of the agent listening to him.

For Krycek, daylight had scoured away all the strange significance that things had seemed to have the previous night. Even listening to a recording of Mulder's call to Agent Scully didn't bring back the sense of unreality. It was just stupid, Mulder was spinning shit and Scully for some reason didn't tell him so. Krycek filed the conversation away in his memory, but his mind was intent on the simplicity and clarity of the work to hand: find Cole, keep a tight eye on Mulder.

The dirty street, the grubby diner: they had a cold plain reality. The morning sun shone through the fly blown glass of the windows, blazed on the scratched laminate of the table tops, the chrome lids of the sugar holders.

They sat at one of the tables, Sal Vitolla having rather hopelessly agreed to talk to them.

Krycek sat back, his notebook open in front of him, and looked at Sal's gaunt face and red eyes. Sal's gaze was like the touch of fire. Mulder was sitting between them, but Sal either looked at Krycek or just looked at the wall. He seemed to be avoiding Mulder's eye. Krycek listened to Sal tell his story with the bare honesty of a man for whom even remorse has become almost too much of an effort. Krycek tried, not quite successfully, to keep the edge off his own voice. The Agency operated too close to a military model of authority for him to listen to Sal with complete calm. Dubretsky's favorite tag was 'a soldier is only as good as his officer'. Where were the people who should have been in control of these guys?

If the Smoker knew there was another member of the squad still alive, he'd want him dead, Krycek told himself. He'd want me to kill him. I have to get this guy out of here, out of the city. Dubretsky could arrange that, find somewhere safe for him.

(You're a good kid. Don't fret about me, die here, die somewhere else. But you're a good kid.)

Krycek's eyes flew open wide, his hand flinched, as if he would have touched the side of his temple, where the voice was. He glared at Sal, but Sal wasn't even looking at him: he was studying the cigarette trembling in his fingers, the shake in his hand.

Krycek shook his head, dislodged the sensation of that hoarse broken voice inside his brain. I'm tired, he thought. I didn't get enough sleep last night. The irony of that was not lost on him.

Getting snarled up in over an hour's worth of evening traffic trying to get back across the city to Bronx Station was enough to bring Krycek back to a grinding awareness of reality. The only thing he hated more than driving in a traffic jam was being a passenger in one. And Mulder was hoarding his turn at the driving with ferocious greed. He wouldn't even let Krycek sit in the car without him: he had to have the keys with him all the time. Which pretty well spelt out where the file he had received from Rae was hidden.

They took the station concourse at a headlong sprint, Mulder taking off a pace before Krycek, but Krycek powering past him to reach the platform first. Even with the extra twenty five pounds and the candy and coffee diet it took to maintain them, Krycek was still slightly faster and probably a lot stronger than Mulder.

Krycek took a brief hard look at the picture Mulder handed him, returned it, locking his eyes on the stream of people passing him, scanning for Gerardy's face. Mulder plunged into the crowd, heading for another vantage. Krycek shouldered his way a little further down the platform, gaze flashing and cutting, his hands unconsciously closing into two fists. He could still see Mulder, a half head taller than most of the crowd; but then Mulder moved too, and Krycek lost him.

"Federal Agent! Drop your weapon! Drop it!" Mulder's shout jerked Krycek around, sent him running, shoving his way past startled civilians, hand at his own holster.

Oh Christ. No.

For a second Krycek faltered, stricken by the sight of Mulder lying on the ground, eyes closed, perfectly still.

Don't let him be dead. Don't let me have fucked up.

But there had been no gunshots. Krycek swooped, turned Mulder over, suddenly bemused by the fact that Mulder was apparently unhurt: no blood, his color was fine, he was breathing as softly and evenly as if he was sleeping.

"Mulder? You alright?" Even as Krycek said it, Mulder stirred, frowned, his eyes flickering open. For one second he met Krycek's gaze, looking at him with naked confusion, then he sat up hurriedly, glaring around him. When Mulder insisted that he had seen Cole and Gerardy, Krycek was just so relieved to see that he was okay that his own denial came out on a snick of laughter that made Mulder jerk away from him angrily.

Mulder stayed that annoyed and abrupt while they went up to the security office and reviewed the tapes from the station's video monitors. Krycek could feel his own temper seething and cooking, adrenaline and confusion and fright all combining into a dangerous mixture. He tried to stay quiet, but at the very least he felt that he was being almost suspiciously lenient towards Mulder. He drew Mulder away from the video monitors, out of the immediate earshot of the other men in the room, and demanded some kind of explanation, sweetening that demand with another trace of that hero worship that had worked so well outside the clinic.

And Mulder gave him the same crazed story Krycek had already heard on the tape of the monitored call to Agent Scully. For one white second he had an overwhelming desire to either laugh in Mulder's face or spit in his eye. Agent Scully, for whatever reason, was prepared to listen to this crap, but Krycek had more respect for his own sensibilities.

But having already heard the tape, at least there was some sense of being prepared for this. Krycek held himself to cold immobility, and through his anger he saw the way Mulder was waiting, hardly breathing, for Krycek to laugh at him. Or spit in his eye. So it was half pity and half pragmatism that made Krycek answer softly, pretending to accept Mulder's explanation.

"...At least it begins to explain some things..." It was only after he had said it that Krycek realized, with a sense of sudden vertigo, that his remark was true. He wanted to look away from Mulder's glowing eyes, but somehow he couldn't. Then someone behind them called Mulder, and Mulder in moving away was the one to break their gaze.

Track seventeen was out in some godforsaken wasteland of storage sheds and maintenance yards, with only the thin wash of white security lights here and there to break the night. The cry from within one of the sheds was like a sound from a nightmare, the voice in the darkness. Krycek had a bad feeling, a sense of falling into danger, a sense that he was losing whatever slight control over this situation that he had ever had.

Gerardy was alive, just about. Mulder was telling Krycek to call for help, to try and stem the flow of blood down Gerardy's neck. Krycek was stalled out between the instinct to do what he could to assist the injured man, and his rising sense of foreboding. He didn't want to let Mulder out of his sight if he could avoid it. Mulder cracked out the order again, and Krycek couldn't refuse, not without an explanation that he couldn't give. Couldn't even really articulate to himself.

Mulder disappeared into the darkness, left Krycek with Gerardy and a head full of fragments and shards. Krycek heard the panic in his own voice as he radioed for assistance. Endless minutes, before he heard the sound of sirens outside, then another eternity before the EMT guys found their way to him, and he lunged back onto his feet, gun out, and went after Mulder.

Like a dream.

Cole standing out on the end of an open walkway, darkness silhouetted against darkness. Mulder's gun a dull metallic gleam on the ground, Mulder's hands empty, lifted very slightly away from his sides. Krycek lifted his gun, chambered a round. The snick of sound turned Mulder, and Krycek saw yet again that dismissive distaste, the look of weary superiority.

"Krycek, put down the gun and get out of here." Mulder sounded like he was dismissing the maid.

Oh shut the fuck up and let me think for a second, Krycek mentally beseeched. Do it, he told himself. You're not going to get a better chance. This isn't exactly self defense or defense of your partner, but it's close enough that you may get away with it.

His thoughts were flying, trying to calculate for himself how much more Mulder's life was worth than Cole's, but of course he had no facts to work from. All he had was Christian Dubretsky's word for it, that nothing else was as important as maintaining the cover that allowed Krycek to stand between Mulder and the Smoker. Do you trust Chris? he asked himself. Yes, totally. His finger was inside the trigger guard, taking up the hair's breadth of slack the mechanism had.

"Krycek. I said put down the gun and get out of here!"

(Do your job boy.)

Krycek froze, breath and heart both stopped in their tracks by the voice in his head.

(I see you boy, I see through you. Look.)

There was a gun in Cole's hand. Krycek could see the long slide of light along the barrel, could almost smell the smokey musk of the oil, could sense the slight tension in Cole's wrist as he supported the solid weight of the gun.

It isn't real. Krycek lifted his chin slightly, trying to square himself against the force of the illusion, against the nightmare sense of Cole speaking to him without words.

(It's as real as the ones that killed Willig. You willing to take the chance boy? You're supposed to protect him.)

Truly a dream. Trapped forever in this nightmare second, with his finger tightening one atom at a time on the trigger while his mind tried to escape from the horrific sensation of Cole's voice inside his head.

(It's easy. Don't be afraid.)

The rank sweetness of rotting leaves, the smell of earth, sun beating down on his head, the weight of the wet air pressing itself into his lungs. Blood on his clothes, making them thick and heavy, on his hands, making the creases of his palms stick together, gluing his fingers to the stock of his rifle. And a sense of his heart thundering in his chest, his blood pounding through every vein, his breath storming through his nostrils, lifting and opening his lungs, life rushing through him, god like. I am death. I am damned. I am -

(Yes.)

Crack of a gunshot, a second punching right after it, just as Krycek had been trained in the Agency, two rounds: one for sure and one for double sure. Mulder's cry of denial fitting into the split second between them. Krycek's fingers knotting up, his whole arm burning as he forced himself off the trigger, a white hot surge of adrenaline shaking him, bile scorching in his chest.

(Yes... ) The voice in his head was a sigh, the dissolution of the dream. Reality suddenly crowding in on him, pulling him forwards, onto his knees, looking for the gun that he knew wasn't there.

"He had a gun, he was going to shoot you." Was that a lie? Was the shaken sick tremor in his voice real or feigned? He didn't know. He didn't know anything for certain. Mulder lifted his head, looked at Krycek with eyes that seemed to see right through the back of Krycek's head. Cole's breath broke and stopped, the faint wet rattle of blood in his throat clicking to a halt too.

"You did the right thing." Mulder's soft bitter words were like the touch of a blade, slitting into, cutting away, freeing Krycek from something. What, was the question. Krycek could only stare at Mulder, wide eyed, silent.

Yes, I did the right thing, though you don't know it.

"I have to go outside, I think I'm going to be sick." He stood up, distantly aware of Mulder looking at him, lip curled in disdain.

"Go. I'll stay with him."

The medics and uniformed cops were coming running, drawn by the sound of the gunfire. Krycek raised his gun and his ID, hands out in a gesture of surrender, and told them he was FBI. They shouldered past him, and he walked out into the night air, towards the car, reholstering his gun. He took out his keychain from his pants pocket, fiddled out the slim metal pick from among his keys.

It's all in the touch. Krycek slipped the pick into the lock, closed his eyes for a brief instant, focussing solely on the resistance or lack of it inside the tumbler, felt the pick catch and lift, the lock turn. He pulled the door open and sat on the edge of the driver's seat.

It was a motorpool car: Mulder couldn't have slit the upholstery to hide the file, and it was too big to hide in the sunshade or in the back of the glove compartment. Krycek reached under the passenger seat, under the driver's. No. The mat under his feet. He lifted it with his toe, smiled bleakly at the bright manilla corner of the envelope, pulled it out, got back out of the car.

There were ambulance crew and uniformed cops milling around, flashing lights of the patrol cars washing staccato brightness across the scene. He was dimly aware of people coming towards him, asking him things, but he couldn't seem to come down to reality enough to put meaning to the sounds they made. He slammed the car door shut again.

"Let me through here. Agent Kowalski, FBI, come on let me through. Agent Krycek, I'll have to ask to you come with me." A slow low southern accent, a long softly swirling trench coat, and an FBI ID held up like a talisman. Glaring at Krycek, as much as to dare him to object. But Krycek let himself be led fairly ruthlessly to a waiting car, where he was ducked into the passenger seat with a hand on his head and the door closed on him. The other man got into the driver's seat, switched on the engine, watched as Krycek threw the file in his hand onto the backseat and pulled down his seatbelt, clicked it shut.

"You okay?" He asked Krycek.

"Kowalski?" Krycek said, pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the smears of blood off his fingers. "With an accent like that you call yourself Kowalski?"

"Krycek, come on, are you okay?" Davis threw a hasty glance around at the confusion outside the car. He wanted to go, but the sight of Krycek's white drawn face and his tight bloodless smile and the precise tense way he was wiping at his fingers was worrying him. His orders were to get Krycek back to Dubretsky as fast as possible, so that they had a chance to look at the stolen file before Krycek had to turn it over to the Smoker. But right now Davis was wondering he shouldn't maybe drive to the hospital instead of the office. "Alex. Do you feel alright?" He insisted.

"I feel... just the same." Krycek turned his head towards Davis, and Davis saw the faint turquoise gleam of his gaze in the darkness of the car. "But I'm not. Am I?"

THE END.

Well, I can stand more if you can.  
Next, That's What Friends Are For

 

* * *

 

09 Dec 97

"These Men of Honor III: What Friends Are For"  
Rachel Lee Arlington  
  
Please forward to ATXC. Please Archive.  
NC17. Slash. SR  
SUMMARY: Part of the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle. Krycek, having escaped the car bomb and ended his undercover association with the Smoker, is warmly welcomed back into the arms of the CIA, as personified by Fairland Davis.   
DISCLAIMER: Is it just me or is it getting harder to love CC as we go along? I'm sick of him killing people off, giving people terminal diseases and fertility problems. And don't even mention the prosthetic limbs.   
CERT: NC17, and slashy with it! It's been too long ...   
DEDICATION: In the first place, for Nina, for reasons too many and too psychologically revealing to state. For Phyre, who told me enough about love and trust for me to recognize them when I finally saw them. For all the Ratgirls everywhere, remember, the power of discernment is given to but a few. And last but not least, for all the people who mailed me asking for more Davis. Here he is, in detail.   
AUTHOR'S NOTES: It's a user's manual you need for this cycle, not notes, but here goes nothing.   
If you're following the 'These Men Of Honor' cycle, the running order so far is: 'Absolution: Prologue', 'Absolution: Act One', this story, 'The Moment Of Truth' and finally 'Powerplay'.   
Just to set things up for you: this story takes place a few hours after Krycek's 'I'll make you a very very famous man' conversation with CSM. Krycek really works for the CIA, and with his cover as CSM's little rat comprehensively blown, it's time for him to come in from the cold. So he turns up at Davis's very elegant town apartment, and ...

* * *

"These Men of Honor III: What Friends Are For"  
By Rachel Lee Arlington.

Krycek let his head drop onto the back of the couch, his eyes falling closed, his hands lying loose in his lap, his legs splayed out in front of him. Davis's voice was a low current of sound from the next room, the one sided play of a phone conversation. Krycek sighed, his attention moving inwards, hearing the weary tread of his own heartbeat, the slow tidal lift and fall of his breath. Feeling tired and dirty and shaken and sore and guilty and like he should be dead. But he was still here.

"You okay?" Davis's soft southern drawl was right over Krycek, and Krycek dragged his eyes open, faltered a fraction of a smile.

"Yeah." His voice wouldn't work properly, it was just a gritty little husk of sound. "What did he say?"

"I told him you were pretty beat, so no debriefin' tonight, but you're to be in his office at eight tomorrow mornin'. In the meantime you and the DAT tape are to stay here where I can see you."

"Sure." Krycek lifted his head laboriously from the velvet soft dark red suede upholstery of the couch, glanced to his left and right, taking in the tussore silk drapes and Persian carpets and the Tang horse prancing on the antiqued mirror surface of the coffee table. "I guess I can slum it here for twelve hours." He let his head drop back onto the couch, settled a little deeper into the cushions. "Anything else?" 

"Yeah. He said for you to get a haircut, you're back on the duty roster."

"Ha ha," Krycek said humorlessly. "Believe me, I get no joy from looking like this."

Davis said nothing, but he tipped his sleek little head with its close cropped honey blond hair to one side, his gaze raking speculatively over Krycek, up from his scuffed black boots, along the well filled legs of his pale blue denims, the cloth softened by hard wear and hot washing. Over the subtle curve of the fly, the brass rims of buttons peeking out of the placket; over the buckle of the heavy black leather belt. Over the hard narrow ridges of Krycek's abdomen, clearly traceable through the white cotton of his t shirt, the sleekly muscled curves of his shoulders, circled on his left by the broad strap of a shabby black nylon webbing holster, the grip of a handgun jutting out at the side of his chest. Along the pale gold of the skin on his biceps, the faint violet track of a vein snaking down into the amber shadow at the crook of each elbow. The haze of dark hair silking around the curve of his forearms, the tracery of sinew and tendon down to each wrist, his long slender hands, one curved gracefully on the crimson of the couch, the other lying tantalizingly close to his groin. 

"Like what?" Davis's voice had a habitual undertone of humor, so he didn't sound any different, but one straight pale brown eyebrow lifted in amusement.

"Like a punk." Krycek made a little grimace of distaste, lifted his hands and dug his fingers into the limp wing of his too long hair, ruffled the glossy mahogany strands, dropped his hands again. His hair, somewhat tumbled, was left hanging down to almost the tip of his sharp little nose. Blinded by the curtain of hair in his face, Krycek didn't see Davis widen his eyes, lifting the thick fringe of his cinnamon brown eyelashes in a sort of 'oh my' gesture. Didn't see the gold dust sparkle in Davis's chocolate brown almond eyes, fixed on the precise press of Krycek's narrow lips, the little tension crease at the corner of his mouth, the small colorless mole on his cheek.

"Where's the tape?" Davis asked, mentally slapping himself. Though his thoughts tripped back to their previous round when Krycek, sitting up, tossed his head to throw his hair out of his face; which worked for one long second and then failed utterly, the wing of shining dark satin slipping, slipping, dropping down again over the smooth black curve of his eyebrow. Down further till it had obscured the deep golden skin of his eyelid and the thick jet black fringe of his eyelashes. 

Krycek dragged his jacket from where it lay on the arm of the couch, pulling the heavy folds of battered and grazed black leather into his lap, snaking one hand down into the torn lining of an inside pocket, following a trail of gum wrappers and fluff round to the back interior of the jacket, and snagging up the tape in its thin plastic case. "Here." He held the DAT tape out to Davis, but it was refused with a slight turn of the head.

"Keep it, you can pass it on yourself tomorrow."

"Okay." Krycek burrowed the tape back into the guts of his leather jacket, then tossed the jacket back into a bundle at the end of the couch. 

"You want a drink?" Davis asked as an automatic defense against the effect of Krycek, having disposed of his jacket, looking up at him with eyes darkened to stormy marine green by tiredness. 

"Yeah please." Krycek leaned back again, watching idly as his host moved away. Rather abstractedly doing a visual stocktake of Davis's five foot nine frame, his massively powerful physique smoothed and civilized by the fine dark bronze cloth and irreproachable tailoring of his loose dress pants and trim buttoned vest. Only the crisp voluminous ivory linen of his shirt sleeves hinted at the sheer bulk of muscle underneath; his cuffs were fastened with mother of pearl links, his right ring finger sported a heavy red gold signet, and his tie was glossy silk patterned subtly in shades of old gold and bronze and olive green. Even his shoulder holster was highly polished russet brown leather which might as well have been chosen to compliment his handmade shoes. 

"Whisky?" Davis lifted one heavy crystal decanter from a silver tray on the side table. 

"Yeah, sure." 

"Ice?" 

"Don't even suggest it ... I'm half Irish," Krycek said in mock offence, then flashed a short vivid smile as he accepted the chunky cut crystal tumbler from Davis's hand. He snicked out a short exhalation that was almost a laugh as his own long fingers, the large rather rounded nails rimmed with dirt, brushed briefly against Davis's small square hand, his pristine little nails buffed to the low gleam of a pearl. 

"What's funny?" Davis asked, still hovering over Krycek, as if too restless to sit. 

"Me. Look at me." Krycek held out his hand, nails uppermost, then gestured with the glass to indicate his boots, his clothes, himself. "Dubretsky warned me. He told me this was a dirty game, I just didn't think he meant this kind of dirt." He tossed his head again, swinging his hair back, where it paused briefly before it returned to its accustomed place over his left eye. He lifted the glass to his lips, took a slow savoring sip of the amber spirit. 

"I think you look great." Davis's lazy drawl was so casual that it took a second for Krycek to realize what had been said. He looked up sharply, black fringed eyes widening.

"Oh no, don't go there. We work together," Krycek said hastily, holding both hands and the whisky glass up in front of himself like a barrier, shifting forwards out of the depths of the couch till he was sitting on the edge of the cushion, ready to make a bolt for it if necessary. Davis fell back a fraction of a step, so that he wasn't quite standing on top of Krycek. 

"No we don't. Right now you're a Black Budget item. You're not back on the payroll till tomorrow. This minute you're not Company, you're not KGB an' you're sure as hell not Bureau. In fact, I'm not that sure you even exist right now." Davis lifted his own glass placidly, masking his smile, but his eyes twinkled wickedly over the rim of the crystal. 

"Owwhh ... " Krycek dropped his head, his elbows on his knees, glass held between his open thighs, his hair falling loose and swinging as he shook his head in half amusement half despair. Then he lifted his head, fruitlessly combing his hair back with his hand. Davis was standing close, too close to be misunderstood. Krycek's face was on a level with Davis's groin, and his cooly controlled mouth quirked, lips opening very slightly, as if he was tasting the air. His gaze locked on the soft deep folds of fabric in the front of Davis's pants, the gleaming edge of a gold buckle and red brown snakeskin belt just showing under his vest. The awkward jutting bump of a modest erection spoiling the perfect fall of the tailoring of his pants. 

Krycek lifted one hand, slowly, drifting upwards, fingers brushing feather lightly against the precision made edge of one pants pocket, down, along the soft thin fabric of Davis's pants leg. Feeling the sculpted ridge of thigh muscle underneath, the bulge and hollow and abrupt end to the lavish curve where it tucked into the top of the kneecap. Krycek lifted his head, looking up. Meeting Davis's glowing loam dark gaze.

"Come down here," Krycek husked, his fingers brushing back up to Davis's hip. 

"In a seven thousand dollar suit you wan' me to kneel down for you? You come up here." Davis was smiling, the dips at the corners of his cupid's bow mouth deepening. He reached back, put his glass down on the coffee table, the heavy crystal clinking on the aged mirror surface. Krycek thrust up from the couch, and Davis stepped back briefly as Krycek put his own glass down next to Davis's. Then they squared up to each other with an air of determined intent. 

Davis stood passive, hands loose at his sides, exquisite face lifted to Krycek. Krycek couldn't breath properly around the bulk of his heart pounding at the front of his rib cage. Jesus, he really is beautiful. Krycek lifted his hands again, fanned his fingers out carefully, cupping Davis's small heart shaped face: savoring the fine bones and firm flesh that formed his broad cheekbones and sharply tapered chin. His short snub nose, the fair skin dusted with the faint ghosts of freckles, barely visible stains of gold. 

"You're too pretty for a guy." Krycek's voice was hoarse, as if he was having to make an effort to speak, but still his tone made it clear that he approved completely. 

"Too pretty for women more like." Davis let his eyelashes drift down till they were half veiling his eyes, flashing Krycek a sly considered challenge from under them. The effect on Krycek was not unlike having a jar of warm honey emptied into his crotch. He took a slow shaky breath, held it, let it go again. His fingers tightened down slightly on Davis's flesh, thumbs biting into the soft skin at each corner of his china doll mouth. Davis parted his lips, exhaled, and Krycek caught the scent of peaches. 

"You're as beautiful as any woman ... " Krycek's mouth shivered a fraction closer to Davis's, wondering if this experience was going to count as gay sex at all, there was something so sweetly passive about Davis. 

"I could break you like no woman could." Davis's voice was so soft and slow and the slide and blur of his Louisiana accent so molasses smooth, and his features were so effeminately beautiful, where did the blade cut of his words come from? Krycek's heart jerked, froze, raced while his breath stopped entirely. For long seconds he looked carefully into those tiger eyes, trying to figure out what the rules were. His lungs started to ache and complain about the absence of incoming air, so that when he finally spoke, the words came out as shape with very little sound because there was nothing to fill them.

"Alright killer. Show me what you've got."

Davis moved, so quickly that Krycek had no chance to react, yet so efficiently and gracefully that there was no sense of haste at all. One heel hooked around Krycek's ankle and swept his feet out from under him, one arm looping around his neck, Krycek's bodyweight momentarily caught against Davis's right hip, then abruptly abandoned so that Krycek hit the floor chest and hands first, Davis dropping one knee into the small of his back. Krycek thrashed, jerking his head back from the finely woven surface of the red and rust Persian rug that covered the hardwood floor. 

"What the fuck are you - OW!" Krycek's protests as he struggled up onto his elbows were cut off sharply by a cry of pain as Davis's small hand caught up a fistful of hair at the back of Krycek's head, twisting tightly. The knee in Krycek's spine dug in a little harder, and Krycek had to press himself more closely against the floor to escape more discomfort.

Krycek could sense Davis doing something else, pulling at something, he thought he caught the faintest high whisper of cloth, but he couldn't be certain till Davis reached forwards and took hold of Krycek's right wrist, dragging it out from under him and back around behind his side. Krycek slackened a little, still adrenaline jacked, but also excited.

The silk of Davis's tie was chill and excruciatingly smooth as it was twined around Krycek's wrist, jerked tight. Krycek shuddered, a rapid fine tremor that weakened every muscle, so that Davis was able to hook back his left wrist easily, binding it closely against his right, knotting the tie hard. Three hundred and fifty dollars worth of hand dyed silk stretched and twisted beyond redemption. 

Krycek, with no way of supporting himself now that his hands were tied at his back, laid his cheek down on the floor, feeling the subtle prickle of the rug fibers while Davis pulled his left shoulder up, little fingers finding the snap on the strap of Krycek's holster, pinching it open and pulling the whole rig off. He lifted away, standing at the front of the couch again. Krycek rolled, got over onto his side, glaring up at Davis as he took the gun out of Krycek's holster, dropped the clip, checked the barrel and chamber, shot the clip home again, checked the safety, put the gun back into its cradle and put the whole thing down on the coffee table, then removed his own holster and repeated the entire process. Krycek's expression of annoyance gave way to a slight smile. Even in a situation like this, Davis wouldn't forget proper firearms procedure. 

Both guns on the table beside the two whisky glasses, Davis returned his attention to Krycek. He saw the trace of the smile, and pounced. He caught hold of Krycek's hair again, dragged him upwards and towards the couch. Krycek yelped at the sudden stinging pain in his scalp, scuffled one boot heel under him and managed to half scramble half fall onto the couch, Davis releasing his hair just this side of scalping him. Krycek struggled along the cushions, leaning up on his elbows, his hands trapped under his back, one long leg stretched along the couch, one extended onto the floor. Davis dropped his knee onto the seat between Krycek's open legs, missing Krycek's groin by somewhat less than an inch. Krycek jumped, jerked back. Davis lunged, catching hold of him by the hair again, leaning over him, eye to eye.

"I think this is a good time to talk about 'limits' Alex," Davis said conversationally. Krycek swallowed hard, tried to drag his brain away from the engrossing subject of how hard his cock was throbbing against the pressure of his tight jeans, back to what Davis was saying. He nodded fractionally, not willing to trust his voice, and tried to convey attention through his eyes. Davis's fingers tightened on the handful of hair he held, sending a heated sluice of pleasure washing down the side of Krycek's neck. "There aren't any," Davis said simply, and Krycek bucked under him, arousal flaring out from the pulse in his cock and convulsing his body. 

Davis smiled slyly, moved back, opened up the buttons at the neck of his shirt collar, shook the crisp linen loose around his throat. He sat back, flicked his cuff links out of his sleeves, put them down with a faint click on the table top. Neatly he rolled each shirt sleeve up to just above his elbows. Krycek, his head and heart and cock pounding, lay quietly and watched as the broad extravagant curves of Davis's forearms and the thickly tendoned mass of his wrists emerged from beneath the starched buttermilk colored linen, his left encircled by the heavy red gold face and band of his watch. Finally Davis snagged open the uppermost button on his vest. 

Then, gently and slowly, he lay down on Krycek, his powerful legs in their fine pants between Krycek's longer denim clad ones. His rock hard board flat abdomen against Krycek's firm but still flesh stomach. His flaring chest and the powerful planes of his shoulders fanning out over Krycek like a solid wall of muscle. Krycek was still leaning up on his elbows, and Davis put one hand on the back of the couch to support his own weight, the other he insinuated down between their bodies, down to where his own erection was pressed against Krycek's tightly clothed hip, down to where -

"Oh Jesus!" Krycek threw his head back, his eyes crushed closed, abandoning the sight of Davis's calculating gaze: suddenly torn loose by the ragged skitter of pleasure that danced away from his cock as it turned to pure iron under Davis's small hand. Krycek's next utterance was a muffled groan, a gasp, a shaking breath that became a catch and an almost cry ... Davis's hand rubbing, squeezing, pressing hard, playing lightly on the small cool slick stain that was soaking through the denim over the head of Krycek's cock, then plunging between his legs, scraping upwards over the taut cloth and double stitched seam, tracing softly over the full curve of his balls, down again, probing for the dipping hollow that was the entrance to his anus, making him buck and jerk, then back to his erection, painfully constrained now against the tight denim. "Oh God yeah," Krycek whispered in fervent desperation as Davis leaned his palm on the solid ridge of flesh.

"What do you want Alex?" Davis breathed, his lips only a few inches away from Krycek's, though he still held aloof from that first kiss. 

"Oh God. Anything. Everything." Krycek writhed, a slow venomous movement that rubbed his chest against Davis's vest, against the fabric of his own t shirt, his nipples screaming out for some kind of friction to either ease or increase their fiery arousal. 

"Alright then, you can have ... everythin'. Everythin' you want Alex, but first... " Davis was pressing his fingers between the cheeks of Krycek's ass, pushing hard against the stretched denim, enjoying the way Krycek was lifting against his touch, opening his legs further. 

"Yes?" Krycek, his eyes still closed, was almost fevered with desire, ready for anything. 

"First you have to do somethin' for me." Davis lifted, was gone, his heat suddenly scoured off Krycek's skin by what felt like a blast of icy air as Davis got off the couch. Krycek snapped his eyes open, glaring furiously as Davis stepped back, stood looking down at Krycek, savoring the tangled fall of dark hair over one of those vivid teal blue eyes, the hectic flush over his sharp cheekbones, the way his red lips parted to give a glimpse of little white teeth and a dark red tongue. The way his chest, pulled open and taut by the strain of his arms tied behind him, was lifting and dipping in rapid rhythm, the way his denims were strained by the rod of his erection, and darkened by the wet smear of precum. 

"Sit up." Davis was unbuttoning the front of his vest. 

"What?" Krycek had heard perfectly well, he just didn't feel like giving in so easily. Davis stripped off his vest and threw it onto the matching couch on the opposite side of the coffee table. He instantly seemed to gain an extra six inches around the chest, as the smoothing effects of tailoring gave way to the airy mass of linen shirt. 

"I said 'sit up'," Davis repeated, a dangerous edge to his voice. His perfectly manicured fingers were flipping shell shirt buttons free of silk stitched buttonholes, pulling shirt tails out of his belt, stripping the ivory cloth off his fair skin. 

"Make me," Krycek husked recklessly. 

Davis was on him in a second, slinging his discarded shirt away with one hand and grabbing Krycek by the buckle of his belt with the other, yanking him out of the couch cushions and back onto the edge of the seat, jerking the waist of his denims viciously upwards, sending a white hot blade of stimulation through Krycek's balls and into his cock, making him stifle down a cry of pleasure. Krycek sat on the edge of the cushion, panting, hair in his face and heart in his mouth. Enthralled by the sight of Davis's naked torso: flawless skin, blond down barely veiling the center of his chest, muscle sculpted and separated and sectioned with graphic clarity. 

"Don't get sassy. Just don't." Davis was opening the zipper of his pants, the structure of his heavy arms and enormous shoulders and even his chest flexing with the small movements of his hands. Krycek licked his lips, tried to find some degree of calm. Davis scooped his right hand inside his pants, made a killing little quarter turn of his hips as he hooked his penis out through the front of his shorts, pulled it out of his pants. Krycek groaned, a low long powerless sound of lust. 

"Open your legs." Davis pushed his own leg against the taut ice blue denim of Krycek's knee, compelling obedience. He moved in closer, standing between Krycek's thighs. His right hand went to Krycek's hair, brushing back and holding the wing of hair that was obscuring his view of Krycek's sharp featured face. The fingers of his left hand wrapped firmly around his cock, presenting it to Krycek's parted lips. 

"Suck me."

For one spinning second Krycek's heart sprang out of his chest, rattled around his skull and the top of his stomach like a ricocheting round from a gun, while his brain screamed out that the way to advancement in the CIA was not to go round sucking off lower ranking agents. Then Davis leaned in and Krycek felt against his mouth the scorch of hot satin skin stretched tight by the power of Davis's erection; the burning sweet acid salt trace of precum stinging on his lower lip, the heady smell of Davis's cock. Krycek opened his mouth, engulfed the smooth hard velvet satin leaking choking erection, drew it in till his throat was filled, in till his breath was crushed and slowed, in till his face was hidden in the soft folds of bronze pants and dark olive silk shorts.

Slowly he drew back, making his mouth a deep pulling pressure, sucking hard, then sliding forwards again, his throat opening to absorb the solid shaft, swallowing, so that the lining of his throat worked against the head of the cock. Davis let go of his shaft, both hands on Krycek's head, holding his hair back so that Davis could see every nuance of his actions. 

Krycek could taste the constant leaking of seed, raw and abrasive on his tongue, and he drew back enough to lap at the weeping stream, the taste incredibly erotic. His own cock was throbbing relentlessly, and a cooling wetness against his skin told him he was producing the same trace of arousal as Davis. He started to rock, slowly at first, then more quickly, working his mouth on Davis's cock, and at the same time managing to rub himself against the fabric of his jeans, achieving a little stimulation for himself despite his hands being bound. 

Krycek's movement was jacking up Davis's arousal level by a factor of thousands. He had intended prolonging this experiment, but suddenly no plan seemed as good as the one that involved him shooting his load into Alex Krycek's coldly chaste mouth. He picked up Krycek's rhythm, increased it, thrusting lightly into Krycek's mouth, feeling Krycek's building arousal in the escalating recklessness of his motion, the way he could cram down the thickness and length of Davis's cock into his throat and still breath in shallow panting jerks through his nose. 

Krycek could only figure that somehow his entire sexual response had been relocated to his mouth, that the wet slipping slide of Davis's cock against his tongue, down his throat, was going to bring him off as effectively as a finger up the ass. He wished fervently that he could get his hands down onto his own cock, but at the same time the sense of humiliating restraint was acting as a potent stimulation. 

Then, just he was swallowing down that iron hard shaft, Davis jerked, rammed against him, choking him, making him try to pull back for air. But Davis's fingers were wound tight in his hair and for a second Krycek was taken up with the pain and the panic and his stomach flipping and his throat spasming and he didn't feel how Davis was shuddering and then there was a rush of warm thick cum flooding over the back of his tongue into his throat and now he was really in trouble only he didn't care because the sense of Davis spurting into his mouth and not making a sound not even breathing loudly was making his own balls lift up and up and he was so close to coming and if it's a choice between breathing and coming he'd sooner drown. 

Davis pulled back, and Krycek was left trying to cough and swallow and wipe cum and spit off his mouth by turning his face against the shoulder of his t shirt. Gasping down air, and ready to beg for something to make him come himself. Davis was standing, eyes sparkling, face composed, breathing a little rapidly, his cheeks and the bridge of his nose flushed so that his freckles were little flakes of gold floating in the peony pink blush. Krycek opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn't sure what, but before he could make a sound, Davis forestalled him.

"Stand up." 

Krycek had to stifle a faint moan of pleasure as he stood, and his cock shifted against the slick wet inside of his denims. Davis took hold of the front of Krycek's t shirt, dragging it up out of his belt, up over his stomach, over his nipples. Krycek realized what Davis was at and dipped his head, allowing Davis to stretch the soft cotton back over his head, down his arms, so that it came to rest hanging down over the bindings of his wrists. 

Davis's small hands went to work, sleeking firmly down Krycek's smoothly muscled arms, back up, under his arms teasing through the soft fair brown hair in his armpits, over his smooth chest, down his breastbone, along the trail of light brown silk that darkened into a fine line and divided around his navel then disappeared into the waist of his denims. 

Fingertips circled around Krycek's wide set dark nipples, around, around. Davis leaned in, licked lightly at each tight bud of flesh, blew softly on them to chill and excite them. Flicked at each with the edge of one perfect nail. Lapped at them, his tongue soft and wet. Krycek was trying unsuccessfully to stay still. Each touch was a teasing torment, only increasing his discomfort. Davis was idly tracing one fingertip over the burning tip of one nipple, his tongue lying still on the other. Suddenly he nipped the pebble of flesh under his lips into his teeth, sucked hard, as his fingers pinched up the other one. Krycek convulsed, eyes wide, snatching out a sharp cry. Davis strengthened the stimulation till Krycek was struggling, then abruptly he stopped.

"Turn around." 

Krycek, shaking and gasping and desperate for more, let himself be turned to put his back to Davis. Davis twisted up the folds of Krycek's t shirt and used them as a grip on his wrists.

"Kneel."

"In a fifty buck pair of jeans you want me to kneel?" Krycek asked as a last show of bravado. Davis shoved his other hand forwards between Krycek's legs, hooking his fingers around the lump in Krycek's groin, pressing. Red hot pleasure drenched down the insides of Krycek's thighs, weakening the lock on his legs. 

"On your knees." 

Krycek dropped, Davis following him, no more concerned with the well being of his suit pants than he was with the moon. Krycek sat down on his heels, Davis appreciating the backview of worn bootheels jammed against the tightly stretched almost ice white denim at the seat of Krycek's jeans. Davis caught hold of Krycek's belt and tugged him back up onto his knees, then he tucked in close behind the taller man, his own thick thighs splayed out on either side of Krycek. Krycek made a soft little sound of approbation as Davis pressed his bare chest against Krycek's long naked spine, and reached around to the fly of his denims. 

Davis put his mouth to the streamlined muscles between Krycek's shoulder blades, taking up the soft dense flesh in his teeth, working his way upwards into the amber angle of neck and shoulder, making Krycek sigh and shake and turn his head away, giving himself up to the sensation of Davis's sweet mouth. Davis's competent little hands were working at the buckle of Krycek's belt, opening it, then snagging open the buttons of Krycek's fly. Krycek, with his hands tied behind his back, stretched his fingers out till he found the open fly of Davis's pants, the slip of silk. The warm damp spring and lift of still half hard flesh, which pulsed and firmed under his fingers. 

Davis, with his mouth on the fine untrimmed cat hairs at the nape of Krycek's neck, slipped soft washed out denim downwards, his smooth firm palms glancing lightly over Krycek's hips, into the shallow hollows of his flanks, down onto the long lean muscles of his thighs. Krycek shivered and flinched as his cock sprang free from the restraint of his jeans, its own weight and heat and the cool kiss of the air hardening it even more. 

"You really take this undercover stuff seriously, don't you?" Davis said softly, trailing his fingers lazily over the quivering skin of Krycek's hips and ass and down the backs of his legs.

"What?" Krycek dug down deep, came back up with the fragmentary sound, trying to understand what it was Davis meant; trying to focus on something other than the fine fiery trail of Davis's fingertips wandering lightly over his flesh, the wet warm press and lift of Davis's mouth on the side of his neck. 

"No underwear." Davis's answer was illustrated by his hands cupping Krycek's naked hips, drawing him back more closely against the soft brush of Davis's pants. "Very punk low life."

"I never wore - underwear." Krycek's reply was punctuated by a sudden gasp as Davis slipped one hand between Krycek's legs, reached, caught the loose weight of Krycek's balls, squeezed softly. With his other hand Davis was seeking something in his own pants pocket, found it, shook it free of the fine fabric and put it on the edge of the couch cushion. Krycek glanced sideways: it was an oval pebble of silver, a couple of inches long and about an inch and a half wide, a hairfine divide between the upper and lower halves, tiny hinges and clasp. 

"Never?" Davis said in shrewd amusement, his hand stroking back from balls to ass, then pressing on Krycek's spine, bending him forwards a little. Krycek with his hands bound behind him had to tense the muscles of his stomach and ass to balance and brace himself in position. Davis reached again, cupping the slack weight of Krycek's balls, rolled them over his warm fingers. "You mean to tell me that the whole time you were supposed to be this so smart academic with all that education and the perfect Russian accent and lookin' down your nose at the Spycatchers like me ..." Krycek would have protested the unfairness of that accusation only he was too busy panting out his breath in little rapid jerks at the white hot cut of Davis's fingertips trailing back along the crack of his ass, back to his anus, "... All that time you were just ... ready for it." Davis pushed the tip of his finger right into the budding hole to the depth of his fingernail, then jerked away again. But the touch, without warning or lubrication, was enough to wrench Krycek's heart into his mouth and tear out a cry of pure desire. 

"Oh God, yes!" Krycek was torn between the need to straighten up in order to ease the burning tension in the muscles of his abdomen, and the equally insistent urge to keep his body open and exposed to Davis's touch. A wave of unadulterated gratitude washed over him as Davis took him by the hips, guided him back and down till he was sitting on his heels again, then pushed his body forwards till his stomach was pressed against his thighs. 

"This's what you wanted, wasn't it? To just bend right over and take it from anyone that wanted to give it to you."

Krycek was gasping, struggling against the riot of sensation that Davis's light touch was sending careering down his nerves. Somewhere very far back in his brain Krycek knew that there wasn't a word of truth in the allegation, but the sheer force of the desire consuming him seemed to have retroactive effect: he couldn't conceive there had ever been a time he hadn't been almost sick with need, ready to submit to any humiliation for the sake of his own release. "Yes." The lie had more integrity than the truth could ever possess. 

Davis reached the little silver case from the couch cushion and clicked it open, emptied its contents out onto the red suede upholstery. The plastic wrapped condom he tossed to one side, took up the second foil sachet of lubricant, broke the edge of the seal in his teeth and tore it open between his fingers. The pearl white lotion ran out onto his fingertips, and he wiped them carefully onto the hot tensed flesh in front of him. Krycek's body jolted, a movement of shocked excited yearning at the touch of the cool liquid. 

Davis pressed out the rest of the lotion onto his fingers, discarded the empty sachet on the coffee table. He shifted his bodyweight slightly, moving in close behind Krycek again, leaning over him, his hand pressed down between their pelvises, working the slick wetness on his fingers around the tight bud of the opening. He circled the tip of his middle finger around it, a light tease of a touch that became firmer, a massaging motion, and he felt the flesh turn softer, relaxing as Krycek pushed outwards with his internal muscles. 

Krycek's heart was pounding so hard that each beat shook through his chest, knocked his breath free from his lips. He dropped his head till his fevered forehead was resting on the rug, squeezed his eyes closed, tried to find some focus in the maelstrom of arousal storming through him. One tiny part of his brain managed to disengage enough to consider that this, like all really good games, was in earnest. Krycek was strong and fast and it had taken an act of iron self control not to break Mulder's neck when Mulder had attacked him; but even without his hands bound behind his back he had no chance against Davis. It is a commonly held misconception that heavy muscle development makes someone powerful but slow. Davis was living proof that with enough devotion to training a man could be whip fast and built like a tank. Krycek really was helpless, and he sank gratefully into the luxurious knowledge that he could trust Davis with his life, his feelings ... his pain threshold. 

Davis jabbed his hand forward, his middle finger piercing the tight ring of muscle, forcing into the smooth burning satin channel inside. Krycek thrashed, hacked out a cry of ecstasy: from any other man the action would have been pure pain, but Davis's slender little finger was just sparing enough. 

"Is that what you want?" Davis murmured sweetly against Krycek's shoulder, drawing his hand back slowly.

"Yes." Krycek hissed the word against one knee of his denims. 

"This?" Davis insisted, shoving forwards again. Krycek twisted, made an inarticulate sound of admission. Davis drew his hand back again, his fingertip stilling right at the soft opening. "No Alex, you have to tell me. You have to ask for it."

"Oh God yeah go on come on ... " The words tumbled out of Krycek, a headlong fall into incoherence. He convulsed again and cried out as Davis thrust forward with his middle and ring fingers pressed together to make a narrow shaft. Krycek felt the electric chill of metal against his burning flesh, and then that cold golden kiss moved against him, into him, the rounded edge of Davis's signet ring slipping into his body. Krycek was struggling against Davis, against the twist and thrust and push of his fingers, against the almost unbearable jolt of pleasure that shuddered up his spine at each thrust of that small strong hand.

"What do you want? You want more than that?" Davis's voice was losing a little of its softness, hard edges showing through the honey smooth blur. Krycek made an honest effort to answer, but the words shattered open into a meaningless grinding snarl as Davis probed inwards, pressed down, found the firm flesh he was looking for, rubbed his fingertips in a slow small circle. Krycek felt the white hot tendrils of his nerves tighten, coiling themselves under and around his balls, through the beating pulse of his cock. 

"Like this? Come on Alex, talk to me." Davis pressed down again, and Krycek felt the pressure of blood pounding in the head of his cock, his balls creeping up closer to his body. He tried to say something, anything, to ensure that Davis wouldn't stop, but all that got out around the choking heat in his chest was a kind of muffled sob. Davis slipped his hand away, left Krycek stunned at the sudden abandonment. Krycek was distantly aware of Davis's fingers on the knots of his tie, bound round Krycek's wrists. 

"No! Don't stop, don't let me go!" Krycek finally found his voice, but he was afraid it was too late. The binding on his left wrist had come free and Davis was stripping away the twisted mass of t shirt from where it had been bundled behind Krycek's hands. 

"Let you go?" Davis repeated, a short laugh cutting off the last word. His hand hooked under Krycek's shoulder, flipped him over onto his spine. Krycek tried to scramble onto his elbows, at least get his shoulders up off the floor, but Davis put one knee on the folds on Krycek's denims pinning his legs down, and snagged the loose end of tie still around Krycek's right wrist. "No, I don't think so." He caught hold of Krycek's left wrist and bound it again, knotting the silk with quick precision, then flung wrists and binding away from him, so that Krycek's arms fell back over his head. Krycek was watching Davis with a kind cautious delight: he trusted Davis implicitly, but there was a certain glittering something growing in Davis eyes that had bad associations in Krycek's memory. The first time he'd seen that look, Davis had been coming back from the restroom on the plane from Russia and Arnzten had been on his way to the cargo hold in a bag. 

Davis kept his knee on Krycek's denims, reached back and started jerking open the laces on Krycek's boots. Krycek lay quietly, his eyes intent on the small intricate shape of Davis's ear, the flawless fine skin of his cheek, the candy sweet child pretty curve of his lips, the solid curve of muscle flexing at the tip of his shoulder, the bulk of his chest and biceps. 

Davis got both boots pulled free, not much surprised to find Krycek's long slender feet bare inside them. He shifted his weight back, stripped Krycek's jeans down from his thighs, over his feet, exposing the lean dark haired length of his calves. For one second Davis just crouched there, nostrils flaring and eyes narrowed as he soaked up the sight of Alex Krycek's slim sallow body stretched out under him. Then he stood up, opened up his belt and the waist of his pants. The fine fabric dropped down in folds, unveiling the almost excessive flare and ridge and twist of thigh muscles, tapering down to the clear blades of his kneecaps and widening again to rock hard calves. He bent over, a supple athletic motion from the hips, slipped off his shoes and pants and silk knit socks all in one highly expensive bundle which he pushed aside with one small bare foot. 

Krycek's gaze flickered from one sinewed hard hollow to another, from one ample curve to another, then centered on the air fine silk of Davis's shorts as Davis slipped his hands inside the waist and eased them down, bent again and took them off entirely. Davis straightened up again, stretched, an eye popping

flexing and jumping of tendons and muscle, then he noticed the little crease at the corner of Krycek's mouth, a sign he recognized as a suppressed smile. 

"An' what are you laughin' at?" He asked sardonically, hunkering down between Krycek's legs, trailing his fingers along the twitching flesh at the inside of one thigh.

"You." Krycek flinched under the hardly there touch. "The sweet faced killer. You're a cliche Fairland."

"I'm worse than that Alex." Davis leaned in, his hand burrowing deeper, finding the slickness he had left behind. Krycek gasped, bent his legs, feet flat on the floor, offering himself. Davis's fingers were stroking, circling, then working in again. "The sweet faced homosexual rich kid killer. I'm a goddamn walkin' movie script."

"Oh yeah ... " Krycek groaned out the words, not sure how much of the approval he felt was for Davis's deprecating self appraisal and how much was for the crashing wave of arousal lifting his pelvis off the floor as Davis hooked his fingers upwards, catching the hardened gland under his touch. Then all too suddenly the bliss was gone, Davis pulling away, yanking at the bonds on Krycek's wrists, pulling him up.

"Where are we going?" Krycek gasped as he stood up, his skin scorching against the velvet of Davis's flesh. He was looking down into Davis's lovely face, drawn helplessly towards that petal soft mouth, but Davis pulled back, jerked on Krycek's wrists again. 

"Upstairs. Move."

"Okay." Krycek breathed his acquiescence, though it was so much wasted breath since he was already stumbling into the hallway, up the first step of the stairs, Davis right behind him, fingers biting into Krycek's shoulder, his arm, down his side. Then Davis caught him by the hair again, and though Krycek bowed back and took hold of the polished wood rail and tried to focus on fighting his way to the dangerous nirvana waiting at the top of the wide sweeping staircase, they put each other off balance and Krycek's knee came down on the thick ivory carpet. Davis went with him, still clenching up a fistful of hair tight enough to make Krycek's eyes prickle and burn, but he wasn't paying attention to the pain, he was paying attention to the sensation of Davis's body against his own, the crests of muscle at the front of Davis's thighs pressed against the back of his legs.

"Up." Davis emphasized the order by thrusting his hips against Krycek, which did nothing for Krycek's ability to obey. But Krycek bit off a mouthful of air, clenched his small jaw, focused beyond the dark veil of his own tangled hair, concentrating on the next step up. He got his bound hands under him and starting dragging himself upwards. The nerve defying sensation of his hard on rubbing across the softness of the carpet slowed him down, but it didn't stop him. 

One step. Krycek got his elbow onto the next one. Things weren't being made any easier by the heat of Davis's ridged abdomen brushing against his spine, the blind touch of Davis's cock on the inside of his thigh. Krycek was panting, his heart hammering in his chest as he pulled himself higher. Again. Davis was half kissing half biting Krycek's shoulder, up his neck, fingers clawing into the satin of Krycek's hair. Krycek clenched his eyes shut, trying to focus on what he was doing, not what Davis was doing. Another step. This was getting impossible, Davis had discovered Krycek's number one weak spot, the fine golden skin at the corner of his jaw just under his ear. Krycek could hear someone moaning, a low hoarse breath of sound that didn't seem to be coming from Davis. 

Davis lifted away slightly, his mouth leaving Krycek's skin. Krycek lay weak under the wash of regret for one second, then remembered what he was trying to do. He made another step before Davis's hot hand seared over his ass, fingers probing inwards. Krycek shuddered out a desperate groan, made one more step before Davis's fingers took him and he knew he wasn't going anywhere. He dropped his forehead on the vanilla carpet and gave up, abandoning himself to the push and twist and pull of Davis's knowing touch. 

"Oh Christ ... " Krycek ground out the words against the silk tied around his wrists. Davis had found the quick shallow flutter that could send Krycek into a headlong fall towards orgasm. Krycek squirmed, rocking his pelvis as if he could escape the sense of his cock turning to pulsing stone, his balls drawing up tighter, his ass opening softly around Davis's fingers. Every other muscle in his body was drawing up tight and hard, his nerves turning to a high tension hum, fire networking over his skin, behind his eyes. White heat gathering in the depths of his stomach, behind his balls, coiling, collecting itself ...

Davis abruptly changed the quality of his movement, thrusting deeper and harder and using a cruel little turn of his fingers. Krycek muffled his cry against his arms, pushing himself back against Davis's hand, trying to cheat out the last shade of sensation that would push him over the edge, but too late. He had dropped back from the very point of orgasm, back into a fevered fully aroused desperation. Davis shifted slightly, brought his heavily muscled legs to the outsides of Krycek's longer leaner limbs. He tipped his hips, pushed; Krycek felt the hardness and wetness of Davis's cock tucking in between his thighs, trailing slick honey on the skin inside his leg, sliding back and forth in the same irresistible fucking rhythm that his hand was imitating. For one crazed second Krycek was sure that the feel of that cock against his thighs was going to be enough to bring him off, and he held his breath till his lungs started screaming. Then, maddeningly, Davis twisted his fingers away, out, gone. Krycek snarled, his body lifting and flexing, but Davis was leaving, scrambling up and over him and catching hold of Krycek's bound wrists and dragging him onto his knees, up onto his feet.

"Alex, come on, move, right now." Davis's voice had the same urgent commanding clarity that it would have had if someone had been shooting at them. Krycek's body had no desire to move, and his conscious mind was taken up with wanting Davis to come back, but some part of him that normally dealt with issues of physical survival had a policy of always reacting when Davis used that tone of voice. He stood up, gulping air, shaking: the final shock to his senses was the realization that Davis had produced that firm voice despite the fact that he too was panting for breath, his cheeks flushed and eyes glowing. 

Krycek blundered forwards, suddenly consumed with a need to taste Davis's mouth, as if a kiss was the fullest sexual consummation possible. Davis was moving back, they were both off balance when Davis hit the closed door of the bedroom with a solid thump which was passed to Krycek as he hit the equally unyielding surface of Davis's body. Krycek was dipping and tilting his head, trying to get to that mouth, but Davis had his head turned away, reaching for the handle of the door, and as soon as he twisted it the door sprang open under their combined weight and they stumbled together into the bedroom. 

Krycek made another lunge after the kiss which was rapidly developing mythic significance for him, but Davis somehow slipped away, then caught Krycek again, kissing the beating pulse at the base of his throat as he guided Krycek back towards the bed. Krycek was too taken with the pleasure drenching down his skin and the anticipation loosening his muscles to resist, aware only of the softness of Davis's lips and the satin smooth surface of the mahogany floor under his bare feet as they moved together across the darkened room. 

"Lie down." Davis's instruction was given as a sweet seductive whisper against the skin of Krycek's throat, and Krycek was shaking too badly and his legs felt too weak for him to consider arguing. He found the edge of the mattress, sat, lay back on a cover that seemed to piece together the chill mirror gloss of silk and the soft warm kiss of velvet; he boosted further back and his shoulders came down in the airy softness of feather pillows that were unmistakably covered in silk. 

Davis was gone, swift movement of warmth in the dark, then a click and the room was washed with a golden glow of light from the lamp on the sidetable. Krycek let his head drop back on the pillows, sparing one second to be amused by the sight of high wooden shuttered windows with swagged drapes of cinnamon colored silk, the highly polished floor scattered with antique rugs, the ornate inlaid furniture. 

The bedframe was a delicate canopy of black wrought iron, arching and angling almost to the ceiling, a single width of rust brown silk laid over its top and draping downwards in a deep fold over the pillows. The sheets and pillow slips were smooth creamy silk, the quilt was a museum piece, thousands and thousands of one inch squares in every shade of spice and earth and pollen painstakingly patched together to form the fabric. 

Davis was reaching something from the drawer of the sidetable: a wrapped condom and a bottle of lotion which he put down on the quilt. He leaned over Krycek again, his fingers closing around the silk binding on Krycek's wrists. 

"This is my house Alex. There are rules." The glitter was back in his eyes, full force, and his voice had the venomously sweet smoothness of a razor's edge. Krycek swallowed hard, eased out the tiniest fraction of a nod. Davis lifted Krycek's wrists, pressed them down into the pillows above Krycek's head. "The first rule is that you keep your hands there. Do you understand Alex? If you move your hands I stop." 

"I understand," Krycek husked. 

"If you move your hands I stop. If you move aroun' too much I stop. An' if you make too much noise I stop."

Krycek closed his eyes for one long second, writhed carefully under the heat of arousal pressing down on his skin. The thought of trying to lie still and passive and silent under Davis's possession was almost too perfect to contemplate. He lifted his hips slowly, arching his spine, wondering if begging Davis to keep going would be considered being too noisy. Davis moved away, Krycek opened his eyes in time to see him stepping to the end of the bed, crawling up onto the edge of the mattress, eyes sparkling. 

Krycek's fingers were tingling, longing for the feel of Davis's smooth hard flesh. Carefully Krycek twisted up two fistfuls of pillow, determined not to reach for the other man: he had no desire to test Davis's resolve, not when his own was so dangerously ragged already. Instead he slowly and quietly drew his legs up, till his knees were close to his chest, exposing himself to whatever Davis wanted to do. But Davis shook his head once, tapped Krycek on the leg, indicating that he should stretch out again. 

"Not like that," he said lazily. Krycek presumed Davis intended rolling him over, and protested.

"Not from behind, I want to see you, I want to see your face."

"Oh don' worry, you'll see me alright." Davis was taking up the condom sachet, turning it between his fingers. Krycek frowned, vaguely puzzled and slightly unimpressed. In his experience simple sex was the best, from behind, from on top ... making it complicated didn't make it better. He stretched out again, watching while Davis tore open the wrap and discarded the pieces, holding the slick plastic in his fingers. Davis shifted, putting one knee on either side of Krycek's legs.

"Remember, you stay still an' you stay quiet, okay?" Davis insisted, leaning a fraction forward. Krycek realized what Davis was going to do, and his heart exploded inside him, the fragments tumbling madly in his chest. 

"Yes. Yes yes yes ... " He jerked, then held himself savagely back, forcing himself to stay still though his whole body was quivering, his cock almost too hard and hot and pounding to bear as Davis's small hands took hold of it, stroking the condom down over the iron rigid flesh, his touch turned to something cool and smooth and maddening by the tight gloss of thin plastic.

Krycek plunged clear over the rim of reason into sheer need. He flashed Davis a look that could scorch snow, then threw his head back again, biting down on a cry, letting it gradually escape as a low acid hiss while Davis was pouring a little lotion into the hollow of his palm and then bathing it over the burning heat of Krycek's erection, one hand rocking a sweet steady smooth pace at the head of Krycek's cock while with the other he stroked upwards over the tense skin of Krycek's scrotum. 

Krycek tried to stay still, to keep his pelvis pressed down into the mattress under him but the muscles of his spine had escaped his control, his hips were lifting slowly, insistently. Davis shifted again, kneeling up over Krycek's groin, smearing the wet head of Krycek's cock into the hot crease of his own ass. Krycek caught hold of the wrought iron curve behind his head, fisted his hands around it until his fingernails were cutting into his palms; he held his breath, tensed himself so fiercely that the only movement was the fine tremor trembling through his limbs and the visible jump of the skin over his heart. 

Krycek jerked, bit down on a hoarse grunt as the tip of his cock was squeezed into a vice of burning heat and satin smoothness. Gradually, with agonizing slowness, his shaft was taken further in as Davis sank steadily down onto his own haunches, onto Krycek's hips. Every millimeter was another shock of intensity, adding to the blaze on Krycek's nerves, another stunning increase in the level of sensation. Davis pressed down on him, his own erection brushing along the feverish skin of Krycek's stomach, lifted again slowly.

Krycek's body was lifting and twisting and flexing slowly, consumed in a lingering deliberate flame of pleasure, his knuckles turning white around the slender metal bar he was clinging to, his eyes flickering closed then opening again to glare brilliantly at the sight of Davis's powerful body moving with studied care. Krycek's mouth was open, his small narrow lips stretching over his teeth in a snarl of erotic delirium.

His heart was hammering as if it was trying to beat itself to pieces against his breastbone; he was sure he could feel his blood slamming in his veins, pounding in his temples and wrists and cock. His breath rasped through his teeth, iced its way into his lungs and came back out as pure fire. His thoughts finally shattered into a million fragments none of which had enough substance for words, everything was reduced to ragged nonsense. All that mattered was his body and its screaming insistence on more. 

Davis's movements were turning hard and deep and relentless, his beautiful amber brown eyes full of golden motes, his face flushed, a dew gleam of sweat on his upper lip. The sight was pushing Krycek closer to oblivion, making him look away, close his eyes, twist his face into the depths of the pillows. And the sight of his extremity was driving Davis on, each of them upping the stakes for the other. 

Krycek struggled in the dark behind his eyelids a little longer, trying to figure which was worse, to come and have this experience end, or to not come and have his heart crash open from need. A sudden harsh gasp from Davis tore Krycek's eyes open, and the image that branded itself on his eyes was Davis's small hand wrapped around his own thick cock, the head stretched tight and slick and red, seed leaking from him and dropping in nectar threads onto Krycek's skin. Krycek thrust up hard, jerking his hips, burying himself in Davis's tightening flesh, though he felt he was being crushed in a grip of velvet. 

"No. Goddamn ... don't." Davis gasped out the words and they weren't any kind of order they were a plea for mercy only the fact that his hand was pumping on his cock and the way he circled and ground himself down on Krycek's shaft meant that it wasn't mercy he was looking for. 

Krycek started to buck in earnest, feeling the fire hot silk soft cruelly tight channel squeezing him, but he was so smooth and slick he couldn't be held back, he would find every fraction of depth his body could take for itself. Davis snarled, and the sound was so alien to his usual offhand composure that Krycek froze for a fraction of a second trying to figure out what the problem was, and then Davis's face turned from an intent frown to a look of such stricken reproach that Krycek almost laughed it was so enchanting, and then he felt Davis's body pulsing, saw the sudden liberal spurt of semen between his fingers, felt it dapple heavily on his own chest. Felt his cock gripped and grasped and pulled and pressed by Davis's internal muscles, and one more long thrust took Krycek over the edge too, only he wasn't coming, he was being brought, the cum being drawn out of him by the motion of Davis's body. A beating red hot delirium stripping his muscles and nerves back till his bones seemed about to crack with the power of the constriction driving his seed out of his body, till his balls were aching, trying to pump out emptiness, till his heart hurt from slamming itself around in his chest. He would have cried out but there was no air in his lungs, no air anywhere, just hard hot flame and all he could do was grind out a low beseeching groan.

Krycek let his head drop back on the pillow, his eyes closed, gulping down air, trying to figure if he was alive or dead. Alive. His heart began to painfully piece together some kind of rhythm and then to impose some kind of pace on the headlong rush of that rhythm. His muscles began to slacken around the burning aches racking his body, falling away into exhausted relaxation, and his skin seemed to loosen and lie comfortably over his flesh. Davis pulled up and off his body, a tidal surge of sensation that won another low groan from Krycek's throat. The solid smooth glance of Davis's body lying along his side, then the peach scent of Davis's breath. The touch of his mouth on Krycek's.

Krycek knew instantly why Davis had evaded this kiss for so long. Davis's lips were as soft and heady as eating roses: not those anaemic modern ones, that smell of nothing but sugar water; the old fashioned kind that are dark and vivid as pomegranate seeds and venous blood, the kind that are narcotic with sweetness. The way his mouth opened so easily and let Krycek's pointed tongue pierce him and search him and savor him was a complete renunciation of all the cool powerful control he had wanted to exert over Krycek. 

The kiss broke slowly and reluctantly, Davis's cropped head resting on Krycek's shoulder, his breath rippling on Krycek's damp skin. Krycek's fingers were still hooked loosely over the bar at the head of the bed, his still stunned gaze tracking aimlessly over the silk drape overhead and the ceiling above that. 

Alive. He'd made it. He'd survived behind enemy lines in the Smoker's grip for long months. He'd sacrificed the last scraps of his innocence, but he had salvaged Mulder and Mulder's partner from the 'final solution'. Somewhere deep down Krycek was scarred by the knowledge that they had each been saved at the cost of losing someone close: or rather Scully had lost her sister, Mulder had lost the man he called his father. Krycek waited for the blade of pain to come, but his body was so slack and loose and his mind was still taken with the way his heart was slowing and his breathing dropping away to nothing, there was nothing for the guilt to cling to. He'd made his choices, he'd fulfilled his objectives and for him at least, the game was over. What Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would make of his actions didn't matter, he wasn't likely to ever see either of them again. 

Davis shook himself out of the lethargy he had dropped into, lying with his cheek on Krycek's chest, listening to the bass thud of his heart. He sat up, ruffling his hands over his short honey hair, stood up, stretched, twisted his neck to knock out a crick in the thick muscles. Krycek was watching him, a smile starting to bloom on his small mouth. Then the smile broke open, turned to laughter. Davis turned, grinning at the sight of Krycek, naked and sweat sheened and with a pool of semen in his navel trembling as laughter shook his frame. 

"Yeah?" He asked.

"What the fuck was that about?" Laughed Krycek, lifting his bound wrists to indicate that he was referring to their sudden outbreak of passion. Davis, still grinning, shrugged, a massive movement of shoulders that seemed to convey good humored bewilderment. He reached and took hold of Krycek's wrists, starting unworking the knots in the ruin of his tie. 

"There you go," Davis smiled as the cloth came loose and Krycek rather ruefully rubbed at the pressure marks on the skin of his wrists.

"Thanks." Krycek shook out his hands, trying to get the circulation back. He rolled up off the mattress, sitting up, flinching at the chill tickle of cold semen running from his navel into his groin. Gently he eased the loose wet condom off his soft cock, stood up, went to the half open door of the bathroom. As he reached the doorway, just as he was about to step onto the large silky stone tiles of the bathroom floor, he stopped and turned back. 

"Thanks." This time it was said with more emphasis. Davis, pulling open the drawers of an antique bureau and pulling out a pair of unbleached cotton sweatpants and a dark brown cashmere sweater, paused and looked up, meeting Krycek's low tide gaze.

"Don' sweat it Alex." Davis went back to what he was doing. "That's what friends are for."

The End.


End file.
